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Target 16:
Enable Sustainable Consumption Choices to Reduce Waste and Overconsumption

Ensure that people are encouraged and enabled to make sustainable consumption choices, including by establishing supportive policy, legislative or regulatory frameworks, improving education and access to relevant and accurate information and alternatives, and by 2030, reduce the global footprint of consumption in an equitable manner, including through halving global food waste, significantly reducing overconsumption and substantially reducing waste generation, in order for all people to live well in harmony with Mother Earth.

Introduction

According to the UN Resource Panel, the production of food, biomass, and materials accounts for 90% of nature and biodiversity loss, as well as 50% of global emissions. At the same time, land-use changes, such as deforestation, agriculture, and urbanisation, pose the greatest direct threat to biodiversity.
Despite innovations that have led to increased production efficiency, we continue to see material consumption grow in line with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth over the past decades, without signs of real decoupling. The footprint of businesses, associated with the linear use-and-dispose model and the perpetual growth paradigm dominating today's economic system, is a significant cause of biodiversity loss and land-use changes. Policies therefore have to incorporate measures to reduce consumption.
To make room for an economy with reduced material consumption, lower consumption-based greenhouse gas emissions, and responsible resource use, companies' business models must change. Therefore, barriers to increased reuse must be removed, and governments must pursue tax and levy policies that stimulate circular resource use. There must also be a general norm change in support of reduce and reuse.

Policy Proposals for National Implementation

  • Implement national guidelines that ensure longevity, reduce, reuse, and circularity in public procurement. Introduce requirements and set quantifiable goals for reduced consumption, increased product lifespan, reuse, and circularity in all public procurement and tendering processes.
  • Implement policies that increase competence in circular procurement among purchasers, from national to local level.
  • Implement policies that ensure recyclability of products, including policies to minimise the content of substances that make recycling difficult or environmentally hazardous.
  • Establish producer responsibility schemes for more streams of goods, ensuring that businesses placing products on the market in the Nordic countries are responsible for environmentally friendly waste management and reducing the environmental footprint of their products.
  • Introduce landfill taxes for critical minerals, residues from the mineral industry, and a ban on marine disposal of mineral waste and other environmentally harmful disposal methods, which also make it impossible to utilise residues.
  • Establish ambitious requirements for reduced waste generation, reuse, and ultimately increased material recycling, to provide clear long-term frameworks that contribute to circular value chains and reduced footprints.
  • Develop policies and schemes to improve waste management to ensure that more resources remain in the cycle, not the least for the construction sector, telecom and fashion industry.
  • Establish a national, state-funded, neutral, unaffiliated collective information bureau that communicates the national nutrition recommendations and gives scientifically grounded information that facilitates sustainable and healthy diets.
  • Limit the influence of commercial industries on school curriculums and ensure that all educational content is developed and reviewed by educators and subject matter experts without conflicts of interest.
  • Prioritise urban sustainable food consumption, through farmers markets, local food rings, community supported agriculture and other direct-to-consumer sales, that adds value to sustainable produce and increases food safety and sovereignty. Also support the increase of sustainable urban food production, such as community gardens.
  • Reduce the value-added tax for fruits, vegetables, and other vegetarian products (including vegetarian processed foods) and/or increase the value-added tax for meat.
  • Develop a national action plan for a circular economy with the aim of contributing to achieving goals to reduce environmental and climate footprints, focusing on material and product flows with significant negative environmental or climate footprints, such as construction and housing, food and agriculture, transportation, and textiles. This action plan, which must take the form of a parliamentary white paper, should include an alignment of policy instruments, taxes, as well as integrating the goal of reducing footprints into all relevant public planning frameworks.
  • Adopt a national goal to halve food waste, which will help reduce the environmental and climate footprint from food and agriculture.
  • Increase awareness of the environmental and health benefits of incorporating more plant-based foods into daily diets.

Policy Proposals for Inter­national Implementation

  • Recognize the potential in faith-based organisations as carriers of ethical narrative capital with the potential to promote necessary lifestyle changes.
  • Support local food system sustainability, emphasising locally produced organic food by farmers to reduce carbon footprint.
  • Establish a system for including the global footprint from consumption in the Nordic countries in the national accounting and implement measures to decrease this footprint.
  • Countries and the EU should refrain from entering and/or maintaining free trade agreements that are designed to encourage over-consumption. Such agreements have been shown to worsen ecosystem degradation, contribute to biodiversity loss, impede just transitions, and heighten risks for environmental and human rights defenders, as exemplified by the EU-Mercosur treaty.
  • Enforce legislation like the EUDR, that demands countries to take responsibility for their global footprint and effect on biodiversity including reducing consumption.
  • Commit to reducing the overall footprint of the Nordic countries through concrete measures, and advocate for the establishment of a reporting mechanism for efforts made by states in the global north to reduce their overall consumption.
  • Develop global education campaigns to inform the public about the advantages of plant-based diets, focusing on positive messages around animal welfare, health and sustainability.
  • Advocate for the introduction of subsidies and tax incentives for plant-based food production and products, alongside the promotion of policies that encourage the reduction of meat consumption through voluntary guidelines and awareness programs.
Nordic Council of Ministers I www.norden.org/publications I pub@norden.org