Modular electronic products are often referred to as a strategy to promote long service lives, greater product commitment, and lower resource consumption. The article by Marina Proske and Melanie Jaeger-Erben in the “Journal of Cleaner Production” uses the example of a smartphone to look at various potential modularity concepts at a glance: their functionalities, their influence on the human-object relationship and their Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). It combines engineering and social science perspectives.

The contribution can be downloaded here until 8 May free of charge.

Proske/ Jaeger-Erben (2019). Decreasing obsolescence with modular smartphones? – An interdisciplinary perspective on lifecycles, Journal of Cleaner Production, Volume 223, Pages 57-66,