Holistic Environmental Policies

Environmental policies, for example to achieve climate neutrality, to implement the European Green Deal or the circular economy, require holistic thinking: it is necessary to consider the entire lifecycle of products and to involve various stakeholders in the policies. This chapter first motivates the holistic approach. It then discusses the principle of extended producer responsibility (EPR), including its practical applications, in particular for waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). Integrated waste management provides the idea for better integrating environmental commodities into the economic allocation problems. The resulting integrated environmental policies (IEP) are characterized by certain “constitutive elements” and are intended to act as an allocation mechanism, partially replacing the market mechanism in a setting with external effects. The last section gives an outlook on a circular economy, its definition and the role that holistic policies play in its implementation. As a practical example, an IEP for packaging waste in Germany is being drafted, which highlights the challenges associated with the implementation of a circular economy.