Extended producer responsibility (EPR) is a regulatory measure to enforce the life cycle management of electrical and electronic equipment, however, the implementation of EPR programmes is not as effective as expected. In the face of the fourth industrial revolution that commonly labelled as ‘Industry 4.0,’ this paper proposes an integrated architecture to achieve effective and efficient EPR from the manufacturer perspective, and attention is specifically paid on promoting information sharing. On the basis of the selected case study, a smart refrigerator plant of Haier, the architecture integrates information systems and facilitates life cycle management. Particularly, eco-design and end-of-life disposal, the two lasting problems in the current practises of implementing EPR, can be enforced based on product modularisation and high level of information availability that provided by the architecture. The outcomes of this study provide a valuable reference for other sectors that involve EPR or product life cycle management.

The EU Emission Trading System (ETS) is the oldest and currently the largest carbon market in the world, but its purpose of stimulating carbon emissions via trading profits remains unexamined. Based on the complete firm-level transaction records of the EU ETS Phases I and II, here we show that the participating firms’ trading profits and their emission abatements are positively correlated, and the correlation becomes stronger in Phase II than Phase I. Specifically, we observe that non-linearity exists in the correlation; higher firm-level emission abatements can realize larger trading profits. This pattern affects the market fairness, though it may be helpful to incentivise emission abatements. The correlation is more regulated in Phase II than it is in Phase I, thereby indicating that the Phase II is more mature. We also observe that the state-level abatements are largely driven by industrial giants.

As an icon of sharing economy and product service systems, bicycle sharing is gaining an increasing global popularity, yet there is little knowledge about the environmental performance of this emerging traveling mode. To seek the answer to the question, the paper employs a survey-based method and a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. We first conduct a questionnaire-based survey to identify the changes in traveling modes after the introduction of shared bicycles. The survey results show that the use of shared bicycles is more popular among young and low-income populations, and shared bicycles are predominantly used to replace walking and bus-taking. Based on the survey results, we model the environmental impacts of the changed traveling behaviors and the life cycle of shared bicycle with the aid of Gabi software. The LCA results shows that bicycle sharing is currently an environmentally friendly practice, as it brings environmental savings in all the indicators except metal consumption. Further, the results of sensitivity analysis show that aging, rising rental fees, and increasing volume of shared bicycles would impart negative impacts on the environmental performance of bicycle sharing. The findings of this work facilitate the management and development of bicycle sharing.