or perhaps when resource scarcity really hits the manufactueres in their pockets. perhaps then they will want to take back their (valuable) waste.

perhaps then with that enforcement, increased cost of raw material a licence model will begin.

ideally an entrepreneurial business person/group will disrupt this buy/sell model much like streetcar and zipcar.

One thing is clear, the manufacturers of products wont create the service model, they are constrained bh their product mindset.

Most likely it will come from other players with nothing to loose and lots to gain. For example the car sharing / renting was done was industry outsiders.

The other very interesting source of product/service innovation will be retailers when they start figuring out they can make more money by renting than selling. Homebase already offers renting for many diy machines.

For example, Media Markt or PC World might say, for 500 or 1000 pounds PA you can use a certain amount of products at a time. If it breaks, needs repairing or upgrading they do this for you. Furthermore, at the end of the life of the product, the retailer must take the product back from you and recycle it correctly. You are then ready for your next upgrade at the end of contract.

Similar to mobile phone contracts in the UK. We have this model with cars, would it be possible to have this model with all ‘white’ goods such as fridges, washing machines, dishwashers. That way when new cleaner technologies come into the market, your old machine is replaced and all the parts recycled and reused for the next machine.

any thoughts?

Transport might not be the biggest impact factor, but would we actually be worse off cutting transport emissions?

I’m sorry but I couldn’t disagree more. Services can be consumed via Internet and phone when it comes to most things. At the same time, all the “old” service professions you mention have always been local.

Decoupling is about grabbing hold of impacts at whole system scale and sending them off in the opposite direction to economic growth. My favourite opportunity is to do the job by neatly correcting market externalities, so that a set of new economic flows are created that all add to growth, more than offsetting the loss of transactions from declining dinosaur industries.

Brilliant to see also the focus on products, which offers a handle on the majority of impacts from economic activity. I’ve published research on how this can be done if that’s of interest as a way to get a policy framework where businesses with the most ambitious missions will do best?