Laetitia Vasseur

Laetitia has made planned and premature obsolescence of technology and consumer goods a critical topic that France is now pioneering and preventing. Through her organization HOP, she is acting as an ecosystem builder, creating new synergies and dialogue between public institutions, consumers, companies, and environment NGOs. Her next step is to bring planned and premature obsolescence to the European level.

Premature and planned obsolescence refers to the set of practices that shorten the duration of life or the use of a product, such as household appliances, textiles, smartphones, or furniture, with alarming consequences on natural resources environmental waste. Premature obsolescence is not only about designing a product with a limited lifespan, but also depriving consumers of their ability to know about the expected lifetime of a product and related cost, the availability of spare parts, and how to repair their objects, and thus directly infringes on the rights of consumers.

Laetitia successfully lobbied for the creation of an index showing if a manufactured product could be repaired or replaced. That helped enhance circular economy and tackle manufactured waste. Yet she realized that, up to that point, no one had developed an entire value chain approach, combining reliable research with both effective denunciation and cooperative collaboration with industry players and political institutions. Laetitia saw that this might be the only effective way to bridge advocacy, implement the necessary regulatory reforms, and bring about a systemic change.

Through her organization Halte à l’Obsolescence Programmée (HOP, “Stop planned obsolescence”), Laetitia has created a highly effective model to win changes all along the product value chain from consumers and manufacturers to regulators. Acting as an independent eco-system builder able to help society move towards new consumption habits, HOP has been organizing dialogue and collaborations between experts and environmental NGOs, consumers, and companies themselves. This dialogue enables Laetitia to build knowledge about premature obsolescence and above all to influence the design of a relevant, concrete, ambitious yet applicable regulatory setting. Indeed, sensing that only adopting “blaming and shaming” approaches or conducting traditional militant advocacy work would be too disconnected from market constraints, she invites consumers and companies, both playing a key role in the perpetuation of the problem, to contribute to the debate and build this framework with her.

Laetitia is simultaneously creating multi-targeted strategies to raise awareness among consumers and change their consumption patterns; helping companies adopt more sustainable design practices and rethink their supply chain; denouncing and suing industries practicing planned obsolescence; and lobbying toward a change in industry norms creating a more realistic regulatory framework. Crucially, she adapts her work to each target audience, identifying the specific challenges that allow her to shift existing systemic practices to virtuous ones, such as asking retailers to inform consumers about how long their products will last.

Having built a community of 70,000 consumers and a pool of about 30 companies, Laetitia uses HOP to give this group the necessary credibility to have their voice listened to and heard by public authorities. The network also concretely informs Laetitia about market realities, thus enriching the relevance, realism, and weight of her advocacy work. By leveraging the energy and knowledge of these two communities, Laetitia paves the way for a more general mindset change able to question our throwaway culture and consumer society.

She has successfully made France a pioneer in this field and now is taking this topic to the European level. Laetitia notes that while in France, there is now a specific index to classify products according to their planned obsolescence, these actions only tackle the situation in France whereas products are sold everywhere. To replicate her work at the European level, she has already contacted French Members of the European Parliament to organize specific sessions on the topic in Strasbourg.

Manufacturing companies have been increasingly challenged by citizens and regulated by governments to consider and reduce their ecological footprint. However, the longevity of their products is hardly ever questioned, and as a result, objects’ lifespan has been silently decreasing. This so-called “premature obsolescence phenomenon” has alarming consequences on the number of resources used and waste generated and is particularly mushrooming with the omnipresence of electrical and electronic equipment in our lives. The amount of e-waste is, for example, increasing by 5% annually, with only about 20% collected and recycled.

Our globalized and consumption culture engenders a race to the lower price that urges companies to focus their efforts on production costs at the expense of their durability and repairability. Therefore, products are increasingly complex to repair because they are not designed for it (irreplaceable materials once broken, untraceable spare parts, etc.). Moreover, prices of devices have decreased so much that repairing sometimes appears more expensive and less convenient than buying new. As a result, products cannot always be repaired, and those that could are not always given the chance. The practice of repairing has been slowly disappearing. For instance, in France, only 10% of electrical and electronic equipment failures are repaired outside the warranty period.

Our consumerist society promotes a throwaway culture of disposable products and encourages the need for constant renewal of products and clothing. The attraction to novelty and the social pressure linked to fashion constantly push consumers to buy new products even when the existing ones still work. In addition, most consumers have no information about or understanding of planned and premature obsolescence and what is at stake. Consumer associations have the role of alerting, informing, advising, and giving a voice to consumers about the safety and usability of a product, but they are not interested in the ecological or environmental issues induced by the phenomenon of planned obsolescence. So, while consumers are informed of a badly designed product, they cannot access information on reparability or durability. As a result, people very often replace their devices before their possible end of life, de facto reducing their lifespan. And, lacking this knowledge, they do not exert pressure on companies regarding the durability of their products.

Until 2012, when the first studies linked planned obsolescence and device replacement, the phenomenon of premature obsolescence was difficult to prove. Neither was there a specific focus on this issue within environmental efforts. While some environmental NGOs tackle electronic waste or the consequences on natural resources, none target premature obsolescence. Governments have mainly concentrated their efforts on recycling instead of focusing on changing product design. Therefore, companies weren’t in any way incentivized to change their design practices in order to make sure that products placed on the market have the longest life expectancy possible.

Laetitia clearly identified three targets group to maximize her systemic approach: public authorities, where she uses her knowledge in advocacy; consumers, where she organizes their complaints in class-action lawsuits and empowers them to ask for more regulation; and manufacturers and distributors, with whom she investigates new economic models to change paradigms related to planned obsolescence.

In 2015, the French parliament made planned obsolescence an offense punishable by law to protect consumers, a law that Laetitia contributed to designing while she was working at the Senate, before the creation of HOP. Aware that a law only has effect if it is known to the public and correctly implemented by the regulator, Laetitia created HOP as a means to engage sensitized citizens and build leverage toward companies and policy makers.

Laetitia clearly identified three targets group to maximize her systemic approach: public authorities, where she uses her knowledge in advocacy; consumers, where she organizes their complaints in class-action lawsuits and empowers them to ask for more regulation; and manufacturers and distributors, with whom she investigates new economic models to change paradigms related to planned obsolescence.

Laetitia understood the power of consumers in their consumption choices, and of consumer unions in their ability to influence public opinion and sue large companies and the government. She began to mobilize a critical mass of consumers through various channels—for example, raising consumer awareness about planned and premature obsolescence through media fights with Apple or Epson; and informing them with independent data and research, notably through a practical website with information on how to buy a sustainable product, maintain and repair it, as well as useful books, conferences, and awareness sessions.

Knowing that suing a company for this practice would be much more impactful than long discourses around the importance of durability of products, Laetitia initiated her work by filing a successful complaint against Apple. She gathered 15,000 testimonials from Apple users and HOP then accused the company of misleading commercial practices, such as encouraging customers to update their iPhone operating system without informing them that doing so could slow down their phones or weaken their batteries, potentially driving them to replace their device. After some weeks, people used to buy or change their phone for a more performant one in term of technical qualities. Found guilty, Apple received a 25 million euro fine. This allowed HOP to rapidly gain media visibility and convene a large base of consumers, paving the way for a deeper dialogue to work on durability and repairability of products. Since then, HOP continues to file one or two complaints a year, which allows Laetitia to maintain pressure on companies by frequently demonstrating that impunity is not the norm, to keep the premature obsolescence topic on top of the public agenda, and to attract new consumers to join the movement.

Over the years, Laetitia has built a community of 70,000 consumers sensitized to and concerned by the premature obsolescence phenomenon. This network gives HOP the necessary weight to have its voice listened to and heard by companies and public authorities. At the intersection of multiple critical issues such as production design, waste, circular economy, and social economy, HOP is reinventing consumers’ unions by empowering citizens and equipping them to become changemakers themselves and act at their own level. She gives them a voice on the topic, offering them an opportunity to provide feedback about misfunctioning devices and to contribute to class actions against organizations.

This base of consumers represents a wonderful source of information and influence for HOP, which it taps into to document reports and analyze data. Indeed, HOP frequently and increasingly consults consumers about their experience, their feedback about specific types of devices, and their opinion on the companies’ practices. HOP has also been using design thinking and online participative democracy methodologies to involve them in the writing of HOP’s foundational White Paper, which is the origin of many proposals that the government has endorsed in the 2022 law on anti-wastage and circular economy, including the index on each product’s repairability. Manufacturers are obliged to show an index explaining if their products are reparable or not. This has drastically changed the relation between brands and consumers.

On the other hand, aware that advocacy for business regulation as an NGO is always more powerful and credible if led in partnership with companies, Laetitia has been weaving strategic relationships with corporations. To do so, and leveraging HOP’s credibility and expertise on the topic, she has created a “Durability Club” and is positioning her organization as a coordinating player whose role is to convene and support early adopting companies, through information sessions and exchanges on best practices. Laetitia has purposely targeted big and small companies that never work together but are willing to take the topic forward because they have a business interest in it, such as repairers (as it could increase their market shares), reconditioners and second-hand retailers, distributors like electrical retailing company FNAC-DARTY or home-improvement retailer Leroy-Merlin (as they need to develop customer repairing services to compete with online vendors or manufacturers with clear sustainable marketing). Companies gain an advantage by positioning their brands as being environmentally responsible. And, through this action, not only is HOP facilitating a durability movement and demonstrating that a behavioral and mindset change is possible, but this club concretely and instrumentally informs Laetitia about the market constraints, enriching the relevance, realism, and weight of the overall advocacy work.

Relying on these two communities, HOP’s proposals are systematically built and backed by a multiplicity of stakeholders, guaranteeing a level of independence and objectivity. This is another way in which HOP has deeply influenced the development of the 2022 law on anti-wastage and circular economy. HOP also has successfully pushed forward amendments aiming at forcing companies to be transparent about the level of durability and repairability of their products to make it a possible selection criterion for customers and to facilitate the repair of their products (through extension of the warranty period, creation of a Repair Fund, etc.).

Having laid the foundations of a robust regulatory framework, Laetitia is now fostering innovation among 15 of the main retailer companies in France, in order to facilitate and accelerate the movement towards more durability and to inspire even more companies. To do this, she has created a Durability Institute that provides basics training on how to respect the law but also more sophisticated topics, based on her work and reflections led within the Durability Club, which helps companies thinking about adapting their business model and practices.

After only a few years, Laetitia has managed to instrumentally influence the creation of a regulatory framework, with recent major victories embedded in the anti-wastage and circular economy law released at the beginning of 2022, among them the repairability index and the creation of a Repair Fund financed by manufacturers through their eco-organisms. She sees this as a crucial achievement to reduce the repair costs for consumers and therefore incentivize them to repair rather than replace. Thanks to HOP’s constant efforts, France has become a pioneer in terms of the fight against premature obsolescence. The European Commission, which has recently committed to adopt the repairability and durability indexes, is now looking to France and HOP’s work as a template for expansion across the EU.

Having inherited her grandfather’s passion for political issues, as a teenager, Laetitia was deeply engaged in philosophy and sociology and knew that she wanted to study the economy to be able to understand from inside a system that she saw was failing and unfair. While studying economic and social management, she was appalled by how consumers could be manipulated in order to push them to always consume more. Coming from a modest background, she perceived these techniques as a blatant injustice.

After completing her Public Affairs Master at La Sorbonne University, she started her career in 2011 as an assistant to a Member of Parliament, working for a Green Party senator. She discovered the concept of planned obsolescence through a documentary called “The light bulb conspiracy” (in French “Prêt à jeter”), that exposed and condemned manufacturers’ practices consisting of intentionally planning the end of their products’ life. The documentary closed with a call to action to implement a law that would forbid these kinds of practices. Appalled again by this manipulation towards consumers, Laetitia felt responsible to do something as designing laws was part of her job. She convinced her senator to work on the topic. While he had never heard about it, he gave her carte blanche and supplied her with all the means she needed to make it happen. She led many fact-finding discussions, visited Ministries, and worked with legal experts, bringing this topic to the top of the political agenda, thus setting up the foundations for the design of the law that deputies and ministries would appropriate later.

In 2014, understanding that her place and added value were more on the field than in Parliament and willing to explore potential solutions, Laetitia decided to quit and to travel for a year to discover collaborative economy initiatives. She came back in 2015, at the moment when the law she had initiated came to life and the crime of planned obsolescence was eventually officially recognized. At that point, realizing that planned obsolescence was only a tiny part of a bigger problem around durability of products and premature obsolescence, she understood that she had a role to play in setting-up a larger regulatory framework. She created HOP to this end, and cleverly started her work by successfully suing Apple for planned obsolescence.