Manual on the Development of Cleaner Production Policies ... - Unido

DEVELOPMENT OF CP POLICY
MODULE 5: POLICY TOOLS AND INSTRUMENTS
SLIDE: Recent policy tendencies
• Change in traditional focus of environmental management;
• Increased role of municipal and local programmes;
• Integration of ISO 14001/EMS with CP;
• CP audits in environmental permitting and access to funding;
• Voluntary initiatives from the private sector;
• CP financing framework;
• New areas of work.
This slide outlines the topics that will be covered in module 5 where municipal
programmes and CP financing will be discussed in detail.
SLIDE: Change in focus of environmental management
• Change of focus from process to product: Integrated Product Policy, and
Extended Producer Responsibility;
• Shift from environmental media to industry-specific standards: IPPC
Directive;
• Move upwards in the production process: supply chain management.
Use this slide to present the new approach to environmental management, that
goes beyond the standard control of production and environmental impacts on
individual media. You may wish to observe that the focus on the product and
the integrated control of pollution are already reflected in regulatory
approaches in the European Union.
Background
Traditionally, environmental regulations and standards focused on the control of emissions from
production, or on regulating industry’s impact on individual environmental media at the end-of-pipe
(e.g. effects of waste water discharge to water bodies, or impact of air emissions on local air quality).
In recent years, there has been a trend towards a more advanced approach, which takes into account
impacts on the environment of a product or a service over its entire life cycle, that is from its design to
its final disposal. Some interesting examples of this new trend include:
Integrated Product Policy (IPP)
This approach is being adopted to an increasing extent in the European Union. The five building
blocks of IPP include: (a) measures aimed at reducing and managing wastes generated by the
consumption of products; (b) measures targeted at the innovation of more environmentally friendly
products; (c) measures to create markets for environmentally sound products; (d) measures for
transmitting information up and down the product chain; and (e) measures which allocate
responsibility for managing the environmental burdens of product systems.
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)
EPR makes the manufacturer responsible for various aspects of the product’s life cycle, beyond simply
the manufacturing stage (for more details on EPR, see the section on regulatory instruments in module
4).
Life Cycle Assessment and Design for Environment are two further examples of this trend.
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