Citation: Hirschnitz-Garbers, M. (2016). A policy mix for sustainable consumption and production. DYNAMIX Policy Report No. 4. Berlin: Ecologic Institute

This policy report presents the findings from ex-ante impact assessments of the overarching policy mix aimed at fostering sustainable consumption and production to support decoupling.

The overarching policy mix is one out of three policy mixes developed in the DYNAMIX project. Each policy mix was developed based on an understanding of relevant drivers for unsustainable resource use and informed by an ex-post analysis of cases for successful or failing policy support for achieving decoupling. In contrast to the other two policy mixes (which focus on land use and on the use of metals and competing or substitute materials), the overarching policy mix aims at supporting decoupling of EU consumption from resource use and environmental impacts through creating supportive framework conditions for producers and consumers to make more sustainable choices.

After an executive summary, this report first presents the rationale of the policy mix (section 1) and then describes its objectives and instrument mix (section 2). In a next step, the report highlights both potential key environmental impacts (section 3.1) as well as potential side-effects (economic and social impacts as well as issues of legal feasibility and public acceptability – section 3.2) that may reduce the policy mix’ potential environmental effectiveness. Based on these key findings the policy report then provides suggestions for revising the policy mix, which could mitigate such side-effects and hence foster the mix’ potential environmental effectiveness (section 4).