Rapporten præsenterer et studie af brugen af frivillige aftaler og forekomsten af miljømærker i de nordiske lande, inklusiv brugen af instrumenterne i et policy mix med andre policy værktøjer. Grundlaget for rapporten er fem landestudier, der hver især kortlægger brugen af de nævnte policy værktøjer i de fem nordiske lande og præsenterer identificerede evalueringer af konkrete frivillige aftaler og miljømærkeordninger. Fra evalueringerne uddrages konklusioner om omkostningseffektivitet samt gode og dårlige eksempler på anvendelse af frivillige aftaler og miljømærkeordninger i kombination med andre styringsmidler. Det primære formål er at udvikle anbefalinger, der kan understøtte og give input til justeringer af strategier for den fremtidige anvendelse af frivillige aftaler og miljømærker i de nordiske landes miljøregulering. Rapporten er udført af Plan Miljø og finansieret af Nordisk Ministerråd.

This is the eighth quadrennial report on the use of economic instruments in Nordic environmental policy published by the Nordic Working Group for Environment and Economics. The report comprises two parts. Part I summarises the use of economic instruments in environmental policies of the five countries, during the period 2014-2017. It provides an overview of new instruments and major changes to existing instruments, a detailed country-by-country description of these developments, and a cross-country comparison. Part II provides an overview of the use of voluntary environmental agreements in different environmental sectors across the Nordic countries. It includes an overview and synthesis of studies that have evaluated the effects of voluntary environmental agreements.

Seventeen Nordic and international labelling and certification schemes met at an international workshop on dialogue and cooperation at Lund's University in November 2011. With this meeting among schemes across fields such as the environment, organic, fair trade and sustainability, NCM Working Group on Sustainable Consumption and Production and Nordic Ecolabelling has taken a first step to create transparency and exchange of experience between label schemes with relevance for Sustainable Consumption and Production. Prior to the workshop in Lund the consulting firm Ecostory mapped information schemes on the Nordic markets and carried out a stakeholder survey. Ecostory found four megatrends that are important for schemes within SCP: convergence towards sustainability, information overload, regulation as driver, and national/regional labels on global markets. This report presents findings from the mapping of schemes, the stakeholder survey and the workshop on dialogue and cooperation. Ecostory describes 10 key challenges and recommends policy responses and gives tentative proposals to follow-up and support cooperation between the Swan and other information systems.

What role do evaluations for environmental policies have in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden? And could evaluations be better implemented in order to create and uphold effective and efficient environmental policies? These are the two questions this study aims at answering. The study focuses on three main areas in regard to ex-ante and ex-post evaluations for environmental policies: Organisation, guidelines and specific evaluations. As a result of the analysis, a number of lessons learnt for the three investigated areas are found and a set of recommendations on how to improve the evaluation of environmental policies in the Nordic countries in the future are provided.

The first report from the project “Improvements in existing collection and recycling systems for plastic waste from households and other municipal waste sources” is focused on describing the existing situation when it comes to collection and recycling of plastic waste in the Nordic countries. The streams covered are (all from both households and other MSW sources): • Plastic packaging waste. • Non-packaging small plastic waste. • Plastic bulky waste. Similarities and differences among the Nordic countries are presented in the report. The findings provide input into the development of suggestions for improvements. The report is part of the Nordic Prime Ministers’ green growth initiative: “The Nordic Region – leading in green growth.” Read more in the web magazine “Green Growth the Nordic Way” at www.nordicway. org or at www.norden.org/greengrowth The report for Part 2 will be published in December 2014.

This book presents the application of system analysis techniques with case studies to help readers learn how the techniques can be applied, how the problems are solved, and which sustainable management strategies can be reached.

The European Union has initiated a number of initiatives to improve resource efficiency in Europe. The Ecodesign Directive is one of the policy instruments that could aid the transition towards a more resource efficient economy. So far, the Directive has mainly been applied to set requirements related to energy efficiency, but there is potential for setting legal standards that increase product durability and promote the future re-use and recycling of components and materials. This paper examines the potential benefits and disadvantages in applying the Directive for this purpose, and analyzes the potential to apply certain types of legal standards. There is a need for continuous development of indicators and methods in order to allow for a broader range of legal standards in the future. The study provides some short and long term recommendations on the way forward.