A Systemic and Systematic Approach to the Development of a Policy Mix for Material Resource Efficiency

Tomas Ekvall, Martin Hirschnitz-Garbers, Fabio Eboli and Aleksander Śniegocki
Additional contact information
Tomas Ekvall: IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, Valhallavägen 81, SE-100 31 Stockholm, Sweden
Martin Hirschnitz-Garbers: Ecologic Institut gemeinnuetzige GmbH, Pfalzburger Str. 43/44, D-10717 Berlin, Germany
Fabio Eboli: Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM), Corso Magenta 63, 20123 Milano, Italy
Aleksander Śniegocki: Warszawski Instytut Studiów Ekonomicznych (WISE), Al. Jerozolimskie 99 lok. 18, 02-001 Warszawa, Poland

Sustainability, 2016, vol. 8, issue 4, 1-26

Abstract: Increasing material use efficiency is important to mitigate future supply risks and minimize environmental impacts associated with the production of the materials. The policy mix presented in this paper aims to contribute to reducing the use of virgin metals in the EU by 80% by 2050 without significant shifting of burdens to other material resources, environmental impacts, or parts of the world. We used a heuristic framework and a systems perspective for designing the policy mix that combines primary instruments designed to increase material efficiency, recycling and substitution of materials (a materials tax, the extended producer responsibility, technical regulations, and environmental taxes) and supportive instruments aimed to reduce barriers to implementing the primary instruments and to contribute towards the policy objectives (e.g., research and development support, and advanced recycling centers). Furthermore, instruments were designed so as to increase political feasibility: e.g., taxes were gradually increased as part of a green fiscal reform, and border-tax adjustments were introduced to reduce impacts on competitiveness. However, even in such a policy mix design ongoing ex-ante assessments indicate that the policy mix will be politically difficult to implement—and also fall short of achieving the 80% reduction target. Nonetheless, we suggest combining primary and supportive instruments into coherent and dynamic policy mixes as a promising step towards system reconfigurations for sustainability.

Keywords: policy mix; policy development; resource efficiency; material efficiency; recycling; European Union; Sensitivity Model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/4/373/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/4/373/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:8:y:2016:i:4:p:373-:d:68303

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().