The following text is for questions 6 to 9.

    The falling cost of solar power has led to a boom in recent years, with more and more photovoltaic panels popping up on rooftops and backyard solar farms around the world. But what happens to all of those solar panels in a couple of decades when they reach the end of their useful life? And what about electronic devices with even shorter life spans? Those questions are at the heart of new research released by a team at Georgia Institute of Technology, where researchers looked into the impact of government policies put in place to reduce the amount of electronics waste filling up landfills.

    Beril Toktay, a professor at Georgia Tech's Scheller College of Business, said that there is a lot of concern in sustainability circles that manufacturers are making things with shorter and shorter life spans, and products are perhaps even intentionally made to become obsolete to induce replacement purchases.

    The study, which was published April 4 in the journal Management Science, focused on government policies used to encourage electronics makers to put more thought into what happens at the end of the product life cycle. Those programs, which are called extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws and are already in use in some states, have two common objectives: to have producers design their products to be easier to recycle or to boost their durability for increased device life span. However, the researchers reported that those goals are often at odds. "What we have found is that sometimes when you design for recyclability, you give up on durability, and when durability is the goal, recyclability is sacrificed," Toktay said.

    The researchers said that in some cases, EPR policies could actually lead to increased waste generation if product designers make products more recyclable but less durable, or lead to Increased greenhouse gas emissions if products are made more durable but less recyclable.

(Adopted from: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190404214800.htm (April 6, 2019))

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