Michael Brunn

How is the environment in Europe doing? This is the question that the European Environment Agency (EEA) has asked itself. In its report "Europe's environment 2025", it comes to the conclusion: not so good at all. Many of the targets the EU has set for 2030 are at risk of being missed.

More than half of global greenhouse gas emissions and around 90 percent of land-use-related biodiversity loss can be traced back to the extraction and processing of raw materials. Nevertheless, global material consumption is growing unchecked.

The transformation to a circular economy is considered a central building block for overcoming ecological challenges such as resource scarcity, environmental pollution and climate change. But while strategies to promote the circular economy are increasingly being developed at the political and economic levels, the public discourse remains fragmented in many cases - characterized by gaps in knowledge, different approaches and sometimes unclear messages. Against this background, public communication and the involvement of citizens play a key role. After all, social acceptance and people's everyday behaviour are crucial for the success of a circular transformation. The "Circular Economy 2025 Key Insights Report", published by the Rediscovery Centre in cooperation with the Irish Department of the Environment, aims to provide a basis for this.

A social transformation towards more sustainability seems inevitable. But for it to be really successful, it must also take social aspects into account. In the study "Cornerstones of a Social Environmental and Climate Policy", the Oeko-Institut, the Forum for the Ecological-Social Market Economy and the Institute for Social-Ecological Research examined on behalf of the Federal Environment Agency how the integration of environmental and social policy can succeed.

The recycling of plastics is a key factor in the transformation to a sustainable circular economy. In the article "A systematic review of plastic recycling: technology, environmental impact and economic evaluation", Chinese scientists provide an overview of the technological advances of the last ten years, assess the environmental impacts on the basis of current life cycle analyses and examine the economic viability of various recycling methods. The article was published in "Waste Management & Research".

Climate change is a classic problem of public goods: the costs of reducing emissions are incurred locally, the benefits are distributed globally. This asymmetry makes international cooperation more difficult and encourages the adherence to fossil fuels, which in many places are supported by explicit and implicit subsidies. In 2022, these subsidies amounted to around $7 trillion globally, of which 82 percent were implicit components. Its abolition is considered a key measure to combine economic, health and climate policy goals, but remains politically controversial. The discussion paper "The Welfare Effects of Explicit and Implicit Subsidies on Fossil Fuels" by ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research uses a multi-regional, multi-sectoral general equilibrium model to examine the welfare effects of the abolition of such subsidies and the introduction of local Pigou prices, which internalise the externalities.

The world is heading for a tripling of plastic waste by 2060. States and municipalities are already struggling to counteract this trend with effective strategies. A central element of such strategies is the behaviour of households in waste separation. Because what goes wrong at the beginning of the disposal chain can hardly be corrected later. In practice, however, it has been shown that the more complex the requirements for waste separation, the greater the likelihood that citizens will separate incorrectly or even refrain from recycling altogether out of frustration or uncertainty. Against this background, a seemingly simple question arises: Could simplifying separation requirements lead to more recycling? This question is addressed by the study "Does simplification of plastic waste separation promote plastic recycling?" from Japan, which analyzes the effect of a targeted intervention in the separation system. The results shed a differentiated light on the conflict of goals between user-friendliness and material purity. The study was published in the "Journal of material cycles and waste management".

The amount of household waste is growing rapidly worldwide, while only a fraction is recycled. A decisive lever lies in the consistent separation of waste directly in households. Classic information campaigns often fall short. An alternative approach is offered by the nudge theory. With small changes in everyday life, people can be persuaded to separate waste more reliably, without coercion or financial incentives. The central question, however, is: What type of nudge works best - and in which living environment? The study "Which nudge works best? Testing Interventions for recyclable waste across residential types" by Thai researchers examines three measures - information messages, physical adaptations of collection points and feedback based on social comparisons - and compares their effect in single-family houses, terraced housing estates and apartment buildings. The aim is to derive practical recommendations on how waste separation can be efficiently promoted. The study was published in "Cleaner Waste Systems".

As with many other products, batteries at the end of life also raise the question of how to handle them further. So far, recycling has been considered the best solution. In the study "Recycling or Second Use? Supply Potentials and Climate Effects of End-of-Life Electric Vehicle Batteries" concluded that continued use is the better option, at least from an environmental point of view. But that doesn't mean that recycling doesn't play a role. The study was published in "Environmental Science & Technology".

With the Green Deal, the EU is aiming for a significant increase in the plastic recycling rate, but currently only about 27 percent of waste is actually recycled. In addition to mechanical recycling, the focus is on physical and chemical processes, the environmental and cost effects of which have so far been little researched. The study "Environmental and economic assessment of plastic waste recycling and energy recovery pathways in the EU" by Spanish and Italian scientists compares the most important recycling routes on the basis of European primary data and provides decision-making aids for politics and business. The study was published in "Resources, Conservation & Recycling".