Policies for a circular economy have the potential to incentivize and change the behavior of both consumers and companies toward circular economy goals. So, with the example of mobile phones, let's consider some of the policies that are already providing incentives to make phones more circular in the EU. All phones sold in the EU are subject to the WEEE directive. That requires producers to setup take back systems for phones. This means that in any EU country, there should be a place where you can take your phone to be recycled for free when you're done with it. In reality, these systems can perform differently. Some have good information and convenient systems for returning products while others can be a little more difficult to use. Collecting and recycling phones is also driven by waste laws and recycling targets at the EU level. For companies that recycle phones like Umicore in Belgium, these policies and new policy proposals have a strong influence on their business. In Europe, it's worth mentioning that the European Commission has presented the circular economy package. And of course this is very important because it contains legislative proposal on waste. But also with targets on the landfill, the reuse and recycling targets that have to be met by 2030. But what about policies affecting my phone before it's disposed of? The EU consumer sales and guarantees directive specifies a minimum guarantee for mobile phones and other products in the EU for two years. If a phone you bought in the EU turns out to be faulty or doesn't work as advertised, the seller must repair or replace it free of charge or give you a price reduction or full refund. This guarantee also applies to second hand phones, but not those bought from private individuals. Countries can also increase the minimum. In Sweden it's three years and in Finland it's tied to how long the products should normally last. But there's also a catch to this guarantee. Usually after the first six months, it's up to the consumer to prove the fault with the phone and this can sometimes be difficult or inconvenient. But there are also consumer support centers that can help. Still, many consumers are unaware that they even have these rights to repair. Many policies for the circular economy are only now being considered and discussed. We asked phone producer Fairphone how they see the new policy developments. Policy is evolving in the right direction for us, like when we look at resource efficiency, maybe not as fast as we would want. But I wouldn't say that it affects directly on our business model at this point or at least not the ones that have to do with resource efficiency, but we see interesting developments there that may have a positive influence actually for our model. Circular economy policies could be used to incentivize, reuse, and repair. For instance, by requiring that spare parts are made available or requiring product design standards with some aspects of repairability. But countries are at different stages of considering these. Companies involved in phone repair like GIAB in Sweden may see little effective policies at present. There is no policy that enabled us to do this or helped us do this. For example, other countries, they've been implementing plans to how are we going to make our country circular? We haven't seen that in Sweden. They're working but it's going quite slow. A challenge is it's expensive having all these people repairing stuff. When a product and resources are so cheap today, people are expensive. So, we can't make money on repairing some stuff when it's so expensive to hire people in Sweden. So, that is a challenge. Also that you can make so much money on waste. So, it's actually maybe more profitable to recycling that reusing. I think they should do something about that. Reducing taxes on labor for repair is one policy that could help incentivize repair behavior. But are there other economic policies that we could use? And why don't we see more of them? If we are talking about the change of behavior as well and I'm not talking about only about consumers, I'm talking about all the actors in the value chain. I think taxation is a very powerful tool. And I think we need to put more taxes on behaviors that we don't want to see and less taxes and behaviors we want to see. But it's very unpopular and that's where I'm a little bit more skeptical that I don't know if our politicians will be brave enough to push for this. Aside from policymakers and mandatory policies, governance in a circular economy can also take place through voluntary actions of networks. Such networks enable partnerships and interactions across the value chain and they can also be catalysts for change. For us, networks are very important. So, building coalitions and building groups that work together across different companies but sharing the same sustainability goals. We sat together bankers, accountants, lawyers to think how it would work this smartphone as a service model known. What it means for your contract? What does it mean for your operations? What does it mean for the way you finance yourself and finance this business model? We wouldn't have been able to do it without all these different people from very big banks or lawyers like Alan Aubrey. They have the knowledge, but they sometimes lack the trigger projects connected with other parties in the value chain to really work on it and get down to the details. It's clear the circular economy requires cooperation amongst a wide range of actors at multiple levels. And this is what we will cover in module five. We will look both locally and globally at what ships are needed for individuals and societies to become more circular.