What We're Doing

The Product Policy Institute is addressing the challenge of sustainable production and consumption by seeking out innovative thinkers and experts from business, government, academic and NGO communities to chart a new relationship between government and business in the service of achieving sustainable life styles. The dialogue builds on a core of shared values: that government has a duty to protect public assets (variously called the 'commons' and 'public trust'); that government is needed to define and enforce performance standards in the public interest; but then government should give industry the freedom to do what industry does best -- innovate to achieve the desired outcomes.

How is the Project Unique?

The Product Policy Institute is unique because it looks at sustainable consumption and production from a policy perspective in an integrated way. Various NGOs and academic institutions are working on pieces of the agenda (e.g., producer responsibility, ending virgin material and disposal subsidies, ecological tax shifting, footprints, eco-labeling, green procurement), but not on the whole in North America. The project will commission original research and collaborate with researchers in existing organizations, pulling together pieces into an aggregate picture with analysis, and enter partnerships with other NGOs that leverage communication and outreach capacity.

Next Steps

The Product Policy Institute is engaged in

building a diverse network of key experts and innovative thinkers to develop a strong framework for effective product-focused environmental policies;
researching high-leverage changes that could redirect business as usual to more sustainable ends;
conducting public education and outreach to raise awareness of the need for change in how products are designed and managed;
promoting effective solutions based on new relationships between government and business.

Future Plans

The Product Policy Institute is the exploratory phase for an independent, not-for-profit research and communication institute that will promote ecological product policy, with strategic communication capacity to bring the complex issues fundamental to sustainable production and consumption to a broad audience of media, decision-makers, educators, activists and the general public. The focus will be global, since developing countries are increasingly both the source and end-of-life destination for manufactured products, and since product policy is linked to trade policy.