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.

When will the start-ups enter the play field of energy innovations in mass? The energy sector has traditionally been a challenging industry to new entrants, especially for smaller firms. Digitalization, decentralization and new renewable energy technologies are enabling also smaller actors to create energy-related innovations. This research focuses on understanding the level of business model readiness of start-ups when commercializing energy innovations. We interviewed start-up companies and provide an analysis of the state of their business models mapped with key challenges that these firms face. Our results show that while most start-ups have a promising value proposition they struggle with other value creation and value capture aspects. Especially building the sales channel that often requires co-operation with energy industry incumbents and finding the right revenue model causes problems to the startups. The challenges the start-ups face also depend on their focus; technology-based start-ups appear to have more obstacles than data-driven start-ups due to longer time needed to mature the products for commercial deployment. 

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.

Relationships and collaborations between scientific research and industry play an essential role in sustaining innovation development in society. Therefore, different types of models have been developed to refer to a set of interaction channels, mechanism and forms of linkage between academia and industry. The studies highlight enhancing and diminishing factors of collaboration management, practices on knowledge interactions and collaborative relationships on various levels depending on considered industrial sectors. This review establishes the state of current knowledge in the field and classifies key metrics and indicators for evaluation of scientific research-industry collaboration linkages.