Ecodesign Laws and the Environmental Impact of our Consumption of Products

摘要

Environmental laws are primarily concerned with controlling the industrial processes which cause pollution in its many forms. In the main, they focus on the mine or quarry, the factory and the waste disposal process, and are not concerned with the nature of the product itself and its inherent potential for causing environmental harm. Environmental product laws, insofar as they do exist, tend to focus on the product at the end of its life and its capacity at that point in its life for harm—not throughout its whole life from its conception at the design stage to its ultimate destruction. This article looks at the first examples of development of environmental product laws based on a life cycle approach through the European Union's integrated product policy and its exposition in the Ecodesign Directive,1 and analyses the extent to which product laws may change the way in which regulations address environmental impact—by shifting from a framework which regulates processes to one which places the product at the heart of controls.