4.1 Circular design and sustainable production

This briefing evaluates Europe’s progress towards more sustainable production and products. Product design significantly affects products' climate and environmental impacts, and the circularity of their life cycles. Design influences their potential lifetime by determining a number of factors, including the extent to which they can be reused, repaired and remanufactured; their material consumption for during manufacturing; waste generation; recyclability; and hazardous substance content. Sustainable production aims to reduce emissions, resource use and waste in manufacturing processes.

Key policies

The circular economy action plan 2020 intends to make products fit for a climate-neutral, resource-efficient and circular economy while reducing waste, and ensuring that sustainable products, services and business models become the norm. The plan also calls for decoupling of economic growth from resource use. The chemicals strategy for sustainability aims to reduce the use of hazardous substances in products. Examples of legislation driving these ambitions include the ESPR and the Industrial and Livestock Rearing Emissions Directive.

Past trends (10-15 years)

Improving trends/developments dominate

• More and more product groups are covered by circularity requirements under the ESPR (Figure 1), but they still represent a small share of the total products on the market. In addition, circularity requirements — or mandates for establishing them — have increasingly been defined in product-specific legislation, such as for packaging, single-use plastics products, batteries and construction products.
• Industrial production in the EU has become more sustainable as emissions of air pollutants and related impacts on human health, the environment and infrastructure have fallen since 2012 (Figure 2). This change has been achieved primarily by decreasing coal-driven energy production and, to a lesser extent, cleaner industrial processes and a reduced output of energy-intensive industries compensated by higher imports. However, hazardous chemical use has grown.
• Material consumption within the EU has remained relatively stable — albeit at an unsustainably high level that transgresses planetary boundaries — while the economy has grown (Figure 2).

Outlook (10-15 years)

Improving trends/developments expected to dominate

• Additional product groups are likely to see circularity requirements but at a slow pace, following the gradual implementation of the ESPR. Their success will depend on strong and well-resourced compliance mechanisms.
• Already at an unsustainable level, growth in material use may increase further, albeit at a slower pace than the economy. Moreover, there is a risk that increasing consumption will offset some of the material productivity gains.
• Industrial emissions are expected to continue decreasing amid industrial transformations towards decarbonisation, as well as the implementation of the Industrial and Livestock Rearing Emissions Directive. However, improvements in pollutant emissions to air and water have levelled off , with additional efforts called for (briefing 3.1 Emissions of pollutants to air).

Prospects of meeting policy targets, 2030/2050

2030: Partially on track to meet targets/highly uncertain

• Both the recently-adopted ESPR and ecodesign requirements in various product-specific regulations have the potential to help the EU meet its ambition to make products fit for a climate-neutral, resource-efficient and circular economy. The ESPR is an ambitious framework — addressing a wide range of product groups — but its impact will rely heavily on the pace of its implementation; ambitious specifications and targets within concrete requirements; and the market’s ESPR compliance, which in the past has been deficient.
• Resource productivity has improved and further gains are anticipated, albeit at a slow pace. This is because the EU economy is expected to grow with material use being either stable or growing but at a slower pace than the economy. Thus, resource consumption is likely to remain at an unsustainably high level.

2050: No specific policy targets

Robustness

Resource use, economic growth and production emission trends are based on long-established statistical data. Monitoring ecodesign policies' effects is not yet conceptualised and proxy data had to be used for the assessment. Air emissions data are reported to the EEA by EU Member States in the scope of the Industrial Emissions Portal Regulation (IEPR) and the National Emission Reduction Commitments Directive. The external costs data are results of a peer-reviewed methodology based on modelling and well-known impact valuation methods. As outlook information is very limited, the prospects of meeting policy objectives are only assessed qualitatively and rely mainly on expert judgement.

Charts/maps

Figure 1. Number of active circular economy requirements according to the EU Ecodesign Directive

Figure 2. Material use, external costs of industrial air pollution vs. economic development, EU-27