On May 29-31, 2019, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) held a forum titled the “Global Forum on Environment: Plastics in a Circular Economy – Design of Sustainable Plastics from a Chemicals Perspective” in Copenhagen, Denmark. The event was described as aiming “to incentivize a shift in sustainable chemistry thinking at the product design stage by identifying good practices, including tools and approaches, as well as a policy framework to reduce the environmental and health plastics impacts.” Following the meeting, a report was published documenting the discussions as well as a working paper titled “Policy approaches to incentivize sustainable plastic design.”
The working paper describes the current range of regulations, market based instruments, and information tools and voluntary approaches related to integrating plastics into a circular economy. “The report reviews the current use of instruments in each of these categories, provides a number of good practice examples, such as product taxes and charges, eco-design standards, extended producer responsibility and environmental product labels, as well as discussing opportunities for their future applications.” It concludes by identifying current gaps and policy opportunities as well as providing thoughts towards development of a roadmap of action.
Read more
OECD (May 2019). “Global Forum on Environment – Plastics in a Circular Economy: Design of Sustainable Plastics from a Chemicals Perspective.”
OECD (July 2019). “Policy approaches to incentivise sustainable plastic design.”
