Plastic products are easy and convenient for our everyday use, but their negative impacts on human health and the environment cannot be overlooked. The negative impacts and effects of plastic waste are now widely known and have been subject of much recent media coverage, both in Europe and on a global level. Faced with increasing amounts of plastic waste, the European Union as a whole and many European governments in particular, are currently revising the policy options available to cope with the problem. One of the tools which may be deployed with a view to reducing the pressures posed by plastic waste, is the Extended Producer Responsibility principle. It is considered to be one of the major waste management policy instruments that support the implementation of the European waste hierarchy. Its application may assist in fostering the collection and recycling of waste streams that contain plastic. This paper presents an overview of the problems posed by plastic waste, and outlines their environmental dimensions. It discusses the role of the Extended Producer Responsibility principle and provides some recommendations that may be useful in enhancing extended producer responsibility.

The creation of future sustainable and efficient energy systems requires a cross-disciplinary approach in engineering education. In order for energy-related engineering students to be prepared for real-world situations after their studies, it is important that, while they are still studying, they obtain the basic skills for handling different concepts, theoretical frameworks and solution types created in the various disciplines involved. At the Tampere University of Technology (TUT), a cross-disciplinary team was formed from four different departments in three different faculties to create a platform for research and education purposes on the university campus. The purpose was to coordinate research and provide students with a wider picture and a concrete implementation of the different layers and aspects that need to be taken into account when creating innovative solutions for future digital energy systems. The creation of the platform started from a successful student ideation competition that produced many viable solutions. This paper describes the bottom-up incremental process by which the cross-disciplinary platform was created. The innovative solutions created in the student ideation competition convinced the university organization that the cross-disciplinary collaboration should have a more permanent platform on the university campus, allowing researchers and students to incorporate more sustainability and systemic aspects into their work, and having a positive impact on the sustainable energy consumption on the campus. 

Energy market transition, which is enabled by new affordable energy technologies and digitalization, opens novel opportunities for developing innovative energy solutions. These new technologies facilitate energy consumers to become local energy prosumers i.e. consumers and producers of energy using renewable energy sources. Hence, a central question for innovating new solutions emerges: how energy consumers and prosumers would engage in co-creating value and novel solutions with industry players? This article explores the microfoundations of energy consumers' and prosumers’ interest to participate in co-creation activities with energy industry actors. Using survey data from five European countries and by applying variance-based structural equation modeling, we find that rewards and personal characteristics influence the interest to engage in co-creation activities. Specifically, the microfoundations of the interest are built upon the need for improvements, the intrinsic rewards, and the personal adopter characteristics. Additionally, we find differing microfoundations of interest for energy consumers and prosumers. We further discuss managerial and theoretical implications of our findings and highlight avenues for future research. 

This case study describes how we developed a new dimension for measuring eco-friendliness in an existing brand experience measurement scale. We also replicated the original scale to test its generalizability in other countries. Extensions and replications of existing frameworks are important for validating current theories and testing their reliability, even though these research approaches are not yet commonly applied in marketing and business research. In this case study, we describe the research stages that we went through when replicating and extending the scale in two different countries: a small Western country and a large non-Western country. This case study also briefly presents the statistical methods we used (e.g., principal components analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling). Replications and extensions of existing frameworks with new dimensions for sustainability-related constructs could aid the field of business and management to further develop more theories on advancing sustainable business.

Mäkinen et al. provide an indispensable view of business model opportunities for electric vehicle (EV) prosumers in the future energy market. The digitalization of energy markets has started a transformation to smart grids where information flows bi-directionally end to end between energy production and consumption. The chapter explores how prosumers can create, deliver, and capture value with EVs in future energy systems. Focusing on prosumers’ digital business models (DBMs), the chapter illustrates the complex interdependencies between various activities and actors needed in the development of an energy system. In addition to demonstrating prosumers’ EV DBMs and the current state of readiness in value creation, delivery, and capture, Mäkinen et al. develop a balanced policy approach that is based on these DBM microfoundations.

This chapter presents an early ideation tool, the Impact Canvas® (IC), that has been specifically designed to involve different kinds of stakeholders in the early stages of the business and research ideation process. The authors discuss how a tool can support the ideation process and how the IC tool has been designed to incorporate different elements for the development of sustainable and impactful ideas. The usefulness of the tool when cooperating in a multidisciplinary team is described. The authors report feedback from users of the tool that supports the perception of the user-friendliness and usefulness of the tool. The chapter concludes with a description of how the IC tool is being further developed to support a more multidisciplinary approach to research and business ideation.

Understanding what marketing messages trigger sustainable consumer behavior is one of the key issues for companies to be able to design effective green marketing. The goal of this paper is to present a conceptual framework for a green marketing approach that includes product, industry, production processes, and supply chain specific considerations to be utilized in the design of green product marketing for the mass markets. Based on a literature review, we have created a conceptual framework with industry-specific aspects on the basis of unique features in seven industrial sectors that are of relevance to the personal needs of consumers from an environmental perspective, but are focusing on the product-specific aspects of the marketed products. The originality of this study lies in the proposition that green marketing should use the actual product features as a starting point and not focus only on green consumers. The greenness of a product should be an additional dimension that adds to the competitiveness of the product when compared to conventional products. Theoretically, we propose that a transdisciplinary approach that integrates sustainable supply chain management perspectives to green marketing would benefit companies designing green marketing approaches and consumers making green product choices. 

The energy sector is in transition to a flexible and sustainable energy system based on renewable energy sources. This complex transition is affecting multiple levels in the sociotechnical system. One driver of the transition is climate change that enforces the policy push from the macro level to change the way energy is produced, delivered, and used. As part of the energy system evolution, the role of the end user in the energy sector is undergoing profound changes, and consumers are increasingly being empowered to participate actively in the production and use of energy. This article investigates how policies might affect consumers' interests in becoming prosumers of energy. We explore consumers' attitudes toward using renewable energy technologies (RET) by means of an empirical consumer survey that was conducted in five European countries. The partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method was utilized to analyze the survey results. Our findings suggest that both economic and non-economic policies affect consumer attitudes toward using renewable energy technologies. We conclude that policies have different effects on consumers and prosumers, who have already made the decision to adopt renewable energy solutions. Based on the findings, we propose a set of policy and managerial implications. 

We test a novel ideation tool developed for early idea development among experienced academic researchers. We presented the tool called the Impact Canvas to experienced researchers and allowed them to test it. This paper analyses their perceptions of the tool: its usability and visual appeal, content elements, ability to facilitate collaboration, and motivate on a personal level. The majority of the researchers considered the tool useful and inspiring. Our findings imply that experienced researchers would benefit from a structured approach in the early idea development phase and it could be supported by such a tool as the Impact Canvas.

The purpose of this study is to explore how consumers perceive eco-friendliness in their brand experiences and how this can be measured cross-nationally. This is a replication-extension study based on an existing brand experience scale. Data were collected in India and Finland from smartphone users (N = 1008). The fitness of the brand experience model is validated cross-nationally with structural equation modeling. The empirical data consisting of consumers' responses on the Apple, Samsung, and Nokia brands confirm that there is a unique dimension of eco-friendliness in the general brand experiences of consumers, and it is generalizable cross-nationally in India and Finland. The study presents a consumer-focused measure of sustainable development that could be used to track how consumers perceive the eco-friendliness of brands. The paper links consumer experiences that guide sustainable consumption behavior to the macro-level management of sustainable development. This paper extends previous research on brand experience measurement by testing cross-nationally a scale including a dimension for measuring eco-friendliness. The brand experience measurement scale could aid companies in tracking the success of their sustainable development initiatives on the brand level.