Part Three of the EGD Series: Sustainable Production, Consumption, and Food Systems
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What the European Green Deal means for Sustainable Industries
By Tom Carter, Amplia Group Senior Associate
Europe’s emphasis on encouraging the development, market penetration, and use of sustainable products and services provides abundant opportunities for sustainability providers, not only in the European Union but also in the UK, North America, and elsewhere. If you have not read the previous blogs in this series on the European Green Deal (EGD), please do so here for an overview of the suite of proposals from the European Commission and broad actions to address climate change and here for the second entry on Energy Production and Mobility. This piece addresses Sustainable Production and Consumption/Sustainability of Food Systems. Next week’s final blog in the series will cover Protecting Our Environment/Financing the Sustainable Transition.
As with energy use and transportation, all humans contribute to the production, distribution, and consumption of food and other goods. These activities all carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but they also create many other air and water pollutants as well as massive amounts of solid waste that often end up in our oceans. Because of the universal engagement in producing these myriad impacts, improving the sustainability of production and consumption is particularly challenging.
The European Commission recognizes the complexity of the systems that provide us with food and other products as well as the challenges inherent in minimising their impacts. Simply imposing standards upon production and distribution is not enough.
Educating consumers and providing markets and incentives for sustainable alternatives is even more important, since production is ultimately driven by demand.
The elements of the European Green Deal designed to enhance the sustainability of food, production, and consumption reflect a deep understanding of these complexities and the need to approach them comprehensively.
Sustainability of Food Systems: Make the EGD’s Farm to Fork Strategy work for you
While Europe already sets a high standard for producing healthy food sustainably, the Commission has established additional standards that helps to enable sustainable businesses to succeed in this brave new world. The EGD’s Farm to Fork strategy calls for an examination of the entire food chain to make it even more sustainable. A parallel goal of the strategy is to support European farmers so that they can thrive while providing the Continent “with high quality, nutritious, affordable, and safe food in a more sustainable way.” The EU will also play a role in encouraging countries beyond Europe to adopt sustainable policies in these areas and to coordinate these efforts globally.
The Farm to Fork strategy includes key provisions designed to:
Reduce the need for chemical pesticides and fertilizers;
Achieve a circular economy in the food production, distribution, consumption, and waste system;
Maximize customer awareness of the benefits of seeking healthy and sustainable food and the availability of those products to all; and
Ensure that agricultural and fisheries systems complement, rather than deteriorate, natural ecosystems; this ensures that those systems are preserved but also so that the benefits of natural services continue to serve humans and the planet.
An important element of the Farm to Fork strategy is combining production, distribution, and communication technology with a public awareness campaign to drive both availability of and demand for sustainable food. Equally critical is the need for Member States to collaborate as they develop and implement policies related to agriculture, fisheries, and forestry.
Sustainable Production and Consumption
The section of the EGD addressing production and consumption includes the three categories of initiatives described below:
Circular Economy Action Plan
The European Commission is committed to shepherding fundamental changes in the way humans produce, acquire, use, consume, and dispose of goods. A key proposal of the EGD is a Circular Economy Action Plan to help transform production and consumption systems in a way that reduces carbon emissions and other environmental impacts over the next generation. The goal is to achieve a climate neutral and circular economy across all EU member states by 2050. Since this ambitious goal will require planning and collaboration between governments, industry, and other sectors, the work must begin now.
Key tasks required to achieve a circular economy in Europe include:
Dramatically reducing materials extraction and making remaining extraction more sustainable, including recycling and other means of reducing demand for materials requiring extraction;
Expanding growth in jobs that support low-emission technologies and sustainable products and services;
Adopting an industrial strategy to dovetail the green and the digital transformations, stimulating the development of markets for climate neutral and circular products in Europe and the world; and
Decarbonizing energy-intensive industries such as steel, cement, chemicals and aluminum.
Empowering the Consumer for the Green Transition
Creating a circular economy action plan will succeed only if truly sustainable products are available to and accepted by consumers. The European Green Deal includes measures to ensure that businesses offer products that are sustainably manufactured and distributed but that are also durable, reusable, and repairable.
Manufacturers of electronics in particular must be encouraged to steer from built-in obsolescence towards devices accompanied by reasonably priced repair options. Other policies will inform consumer choices and empower them to actively contribute to the green transition. The plan will also encourage businesses offering sharing and renting of products and services that are sustainable and affordable. Finally, consumers will have access to resources that separate truly sustainable products from green washing.
Maximizing Utilization of Technology, Digitization, and Sustainable Resources
The Commission envisions using digital and other technologies to ensure the development of a circular economy and to empower consumers. Specific tools in achieving these goals could include:
Digital access to information on the sustainability of products sold in the EU
Policies to ensure the reduction of waste and recovery of waste materials when necessary, including developing EU-wide markets for recycled materials
Prioritizing access to raw materials to products that are sustainable or absolutely necessary for citizens’ well being and safety
Broadband networks and data centers to monitor and orchestrate the circular economy to maximize efficiency
Digital remote air and water monitoring
Focus subsidies, market development, and incentives on breakthrough technologies with the potential for greatest impact on reducing emissions and enhancing sustainability, including non-fossil fuels, energy storage, carbon-free steel, and others.
To make European production and consumption effectively sustainable and circular, the Commission will employ the array of available digital technologies—artificial intelligence, 5G, and cloud and edge computing—and those yet to be developed or envisioned. To facilitate this, the EGD envisions a European digital sector that “puts sustainability at its heart.”
EGD Action items
The EGD includes a comprehensive suite of specific legislative and non-legislative proposals addressing each of the eight elements covered in this series of blogs. Those for this blog’s topics are listed below.
Sustainability of Food Systems
“Farm to Fork” Strategy (non-legislative, Q1 2020)
Sustainable Production and Consumption
New Circular Economy Action Plan (non-legislative, Q1 2020)
Empowering the consumer for the green transition, including impact assessment (legislative, Article 114 TFEU, Q4 2020)
What are the Opportunities for Sustainable Industries?
The EGD offers boundless opportunities for innovations in sustainable food and production systems. The European Green Deal will enhance these opportunities for industries and companies in the following sectors:
Providers of agricultural products and breeds that require little or no pesticides or fertilizers or offer pest control and crop nutrition without adverse environmental impacts
Providers of technologies, products, and services to educate consumers on the availability and benefits of sustainable food and other products
Makers of products that can be sustainability manufactured, with minimal use of carbon-fueled energy and extracted materials
Distributors offering efficient systems for delivering food and products with minimal emissions or other environmental impacts
Developers of innovative and efficient systems for gathering and recycling waste
Manufacturers of sustainable products that utilize recycled materials
Creators of innovative manufacturing processes, particularly for energy-intensive industries
Providers of durable, reusable, and repairable products, particularly electronics
Developers of digital systems that can contribute to building, monitoring, and ensuring the sustainability of a circular economy
Creators of breakthrough technologies to enable quantum leaps in sustainability, including energy production and storage and manufacturing of products that are sustainable and necessary for well being.
The industries and companies that begin now to engage in EU policy will have a greater voice in the specific characteristics of the measures to implement the EGD, including the actions described above.
We are uniquely positioned to provide expertise in sustainability, advocacy, public relations, EU policy and relationship-building with the European Commission.
Contact us today to explore how to encourage supportive policies and maximize markets for products and services that align to the New European Green Deal.
Our multidisciplinary team, Amplia Group and Passerelle, are based in the US, UK, and Europe. We are uniquely positioned to provide expertise in sustainability, advocacy, public relations, EU policy and relationship-building with the European Commission. Learn more about us and explore how we help our global clients encourage supportive policies and maximise markets for products and services that align to the New European Green Deal.