-Europe & waste

-Saves resources

-What is it?

• Waste prevention
• Dematerialization
• Sustainable consumption and production
• Integrated Product Policy

From the 90's on, a number of strategies has been developed to try and reduce the impacts of our consumption patterns on the environment. These strategies do not only address the end-of-life of products. They go beyond recycling and recovery of valuable resources that waste still contain. They rather try to consider products' lifecycle as a whole: extraction of raw materials, manufacturing of products, purchasing, use and eventually proper handling at the end-of-life.

Waste prevention, dematerialisation, sustainable production and consumption are concepts which are increasingly used when referring to such strategies.

What are the similarities and differences
between these concepts ?

Waste prevention

considers the full life-cycle of the product, as early as the conception stage, to achieve a reduction in total amount of waste produced locally.

Dematerialisation

considers, beside waste, natural resources involved in the products' life-cycle. It literally means the use of less materials.

Dematerialisation is defined by UNEP as "the reduction of total material and energy throughput of any product and service, and thus the limitation of its environmental impact. This includes reduction of raw materials at the production stage, of energy and material inputs at the use stage, and of waste at the disposal stage."

Dematerialisation is closely linked with improving products' efficiency and with saving, reusing or recycling materials and products. It entails actions at every stage of the production and consumption chain:

• resource savings in material extraction,
• improved eco-design of products
• technological innovations in the production process
• environmentally conscious consumption patterns
• recycling of waste, etc.

Dematerialisation strategies can translate into:

• the conception and manufacture of a smaller or lighter product
• the replacement of material goods by non-material substitutes (for instance a letter on paper replaced by an electronic mail)
• the reduction in the use of material systems or of systems requiring large infrastructures (for instance using telecommunications instead of using a car to go to work)

Sustainable consumption

is defined by UNEP as " the use of services and related products which respond to the basic needs and bring a better quality of life while minimising the use of natural resources and toxic materials as well as the emissions of waste and pollutants over the life-cycle so as not to jeopardise the needs of future generations".

Sustainable consumption has 3 major goals :

1. Less: radical reduction of aggregate materials throughput in developed economies (= dematerialization)
2. More: sustainable economic development in developing countries which responds to needs
3. Ethical: changes in global patterns of consumption, based on re-considered values and cultural practices in the North; access and redistribution in the South

Thus sustainable consumption addresses 3 categories of impacts of current ways of life and consumption patterns:

• Environmental impacts i.e. resource depletion, pollution, biodiversity reduction
• Social impacts: resulting from underconsumption, which affects those the most exposed to food scarcity, environmental insecurity and low economic viability; and from overconsumption, which effects on the quality of life or people satisfaction is not obvious.
• Economic impacts: the costs of global warming or of the loss of biodiversity, the high dependence of some regions on the production of a limited number of commodities, which quantities can rapidly decrease.

Source: UNEP, Consumption opportunities - Strategies for change - A report for decision-makers, Geneva, 2001 

IPP: a promising approach for product and waste management

The Integrated Product Policy - IPP is a new policy under development in the European Union. It intends to address the multiple aspects of modern waste policy, notably it aims at a preventive approve. This includes a holistic approach of the lifecycle of products & the involvement of all relevant stakeholders.

A number of common principles underlie international, European and national waste policies, notably:

• the prevention principle: the avoidance or minimisation of waste production
• the precautionary principle: the anticipation of potential problems.

These principles lead debates beyond the waste management options hierarchy and the Integrated Waste Management. The new waste policy also encompasses elements of products, industry and consumers policies.

The recognition of these far-reaching aspects of waste policy gave birth to the concept of Integrated Product Policy (IPP) currently under discussion at the EU level.

Industry, public authorities and NGOs diversely understand this concept due to diverging interests and objectives. Yet they all acknowledge the need to integrate environmental criteria at all stages of a product lifecycle: design, manufacture, distribution, consumption, and finally reintegration of the discarded product into the economy.

Robin Murray, an industrial economist, gives another interesting formulation of this new objective: "Government is no longer dealing solely with the debris from the mainstream economy, to be carried away and disposed of at public expense. It is required to engage with the central production and consumption processes of the mainstream economy itself. The issues demand a shift from protective regulation to the developmental state".

In other words, a strong public intervention is necessary and should be oriented towards developing a market for recycling products rather than just coping with waste disposal.
This creates new challenge and new role for public authorities and in particular for local and regional authorities.