The aim and purpose behind the EU’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation

Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) came into force last July, to ensure companies that sell EU products “improve the circularity, energy performance and other environmental sustainability aspects of products placed on the EU market.”

Alongside this, the EU is also hopeful that having this regulation in place will encourage parties and companies to work towards, “protecting our planet, fostering more sustainable business models, and strengthening the overall competitiveness and resilience of the EU economy.”

ESPR has been labelled as ‘framework legislation’, which means that, “concrete product rules will be decided progressively over time, on a product-by-product basis, or horizontally, based on groups of products with similar characteristics.” Currently, ESPR is dedicated to addressing the “destruction of unsold consumer products ” while paying attention to ‘measures around digital product passports and green public procurement’ on a high level.

Furthermore, ESPR is dedicated to focusing on a variety of categories when it comes to physical goods, with a few exceptions such as feed and food. The regulations aim to create both performance and information conditions for each product group. These conditions are to be called ‘ecodesign requirements.’

Overall, ESPR is set to, “Improve product durability, reusability, upgradability, and reparability, make products more energy and resource-efficient, address the presence of substances that inhibit circularity, increase recycled content, make products easier to remanufacture and recycle, set rules on carbon and environmental footprints, and improve the availability of information on product sustainability.”