ANEC & BEUC views on the European Commission’s Sustainable Product Initiative

Within the Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP), the European Commission announced the development of a policy initiative aimed at making sustainable products the norm and addressing the challenges that consumers often face when trying to make sustainable choices.

ANEC and BEUC welcome this initiative and agree that to meet the CEAP’s ambitious objectives, systemic changes are needed in the way we address products’ sustainability at policy level. The focus should be on developing rules that make all products more sustainable by design, therefore products that are built to last, fir for purpose, easily repairable, energy and material efficient, free from dangerous chemicals and built respecting human rights and fair labour conditions.

To make this possible, ANEC and BEUC recommend developing an instrument that would comprehensively address the sustainable production and consumption of all products, as well as the way consumers are informed about sustainability aspects. The Ecodesign Directive is a well-suited instrument to bring more sustainable products on the EU market, but its scope should be extended to non-energy related products and its governance modernized, to enable swift decision making that keeps pace with technological improvement. It is essential that that the European Commission allocates sufficient resources to the development of these measures, to enable the adoption of meaningful Ecodesign regulations in the future, as well as the prompt revision of existing ones.

The role of the Ecodesign framework in reducing the environmental burden of products should be strengthened. Additional sustainability aspects should be addressed beyond products’ energy efficiency, including resource efficiency, chemical restrictions, and waste prevention, as well as usability and accessibility. To this end, sustainability principles and horizontal measures should be developed to be used as a checklist to assess what aspects are relevant for each product, to ensure that the appropriate sustainability parameters are considered when developing product/sector specific Regulations.

Efforts should also be increased to enable more effective compliance and enforcement of sustainability rules. In this context, it should be investigated with enforcement authorities if the deployment of digital tools (e.g., the product passport) can increase transparency in the entire life cycle of a product and facilitate the tracking of compliance in all relevant stages from production to disposal/recycling. Market surveillance activities must also be complemented by effective enforcement actions, such as fines and penalties. There should be transparent disclosure of the non-compliance findings to trigger name-and-shame mechanisms. Relevant product information is also to be made available in physical form at the point of sales to enable all consumers to make informed choices.

In addition to measures addressing products’ sustainable design, the European Commission should also consider ways to incentivise more sustainable business models (such as renting, reuse and second-hand markets) and strengthen consumer rights in these areas. More information and data should be collected on the financial and environmental benefits of other circular business models, such as the sharing economy and product-as-a-service systems.  Read more.