Designing more sustainable products: 18 categories with high potential

Customer browsing through second-hand clothes — © qunica.com, stock.adobe.com

Products and the way we use and consume them have a significant impact on the environment. The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), which entered into force this July, is part of the Commission’s approach to mitigating this impact by promoting more environmentally sustainable and circular products. Its goal is to achieve better environmental sustainability for almost all categories of products in the EU market.

The ESPR (EU Regulation 2024/1781) lays the foundation for the subsequent adoption of mandatory environmental requirements, either on a product-by-product basis or on the basis of groups of products with similar characteristics. To support its effectiveness, the JRC has assessed a number of products and ranked them for possible prioritisation in the first ESPR Working Plan, to be adopted by the Commission in the first half of 2025, following consultation of the members of the Ecodesign Forum.

Priority products

JRC researchers have presented their recommendations in the report Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation: Study on new product priorities. It identifies products based on their relevance in terms of environmental impacts, improvement potential, open strategic autonomy, and the extent to which such products are covered by other EU policies.

Out of an initial group of 33 product categories, the JRC report selects 18 product groups – both final and intermediate – for which regulation under ESPR may have significant potential to reduce environmental impacts and enhance EU strategic autonomy.

The list includes:

Eleven final products: textiles and footwear, furniture, tyres, bed mattresses, detergents, paints and varnishes, lubricants, cosmetics, toys, fishing gears, absorbent hygiene products.
Seven intermediate products: iron and steel, commodity chemicals, non-ferrous, non-aluminium metal products, aluminium, plastic and polymers, pulp and paper, glass.

Setting Ecodesign requirements for these product groups under the ESPR could help ensure improvements from an environmental and security of supply angle. This is especially important as current EU consumption patterns are pushing environmental impacts beyond the planet's limits.

Together with other elements – such as the criteria and priority list of products set out in Article 18 of the ESPR and the political priorities of the new Commission – the findings of the JRC will feed into reflections for the preparation of the first ESPR Working Plan.

What makes a product sustainable?

When evaluating the product groups, JRC scientists considered 10 different environmental categories. These include water, air, biodiversity, and soil effects, as well as life-cycle energy consumption, waste generation and management, climate change, human toxicity, material efficiency, and lifetime extension.

The products were scored against these categories in terms of both impacts and potential for reducing such impacts. In addition, the product groups were analysed in terms of policy coverage, economic relevance, and potential costs involved with regulating them. This enabled a ranking of products, where a higher score indicates a higher relevance for future ESPR rules.

As a complementary criterion, the JRC analysis also looked at how the products could enhance EU strategic autonomy by reducing supply chain dependencies and increasing circularity.

The results of the study were also compared against the overall Consumption Footprint, which is a model that estimates the environmental impacts of an average EU citizen, and the planetary boundaries, which describe the limits of the Earth to sustain our way of living. The analysis indicated that the products suggested as priorities represent a relevant share of impacts of EU consumption and could in some cases help to decrease the pressure on planetary boundaries.

Horizontal requirements

The ESPR includes the possibility to apply ecodesign requirements “horizontally” across multiple product groups, when those display one or more similarities.

Horizontal requirements on durability, recyclability, and recycled content are ranked highly by the researchers for potential prioritisation under ESPR. According to the experts’ analysis, these could help improve the efficiency of sample product groups, such as textiles, footwear, light transport, toys, or mattresses, in addition to electronics and other energy-related products.

The horizontal requirements were also assessed based on their potential to improve performance, with durability (including repairability) standing out as having the greatest potential to reduce environmental effects.

Next steps

This report presents the JRC’s final analysis of potential product priorities for the ESPR, and integrates feedback from an open public consultation held in 2023 on a preliminary version of the report. As the findings will feed into the Commission’s reflections for the preparation of the first ESPR Working Plan, it contributes towards efforts to align EU markets with sustainability goals and to guide the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation to drive meaningful change.

The products ultimately selected for inclusion in the first ESPR Working Plan will be the focus of additional in-depth studies that will investigate the feasibility of setting ESPR rules, as well as of targeted stakeholder consultations.

Background

The ESPR (EU Regulation 2024/1781) is a key element of the EU's environmental policy, focused on improving product design to reduce waste and resource consumption, and will support the efforts to enhance the competitiveness of Europe’s net-zero industry and to accelerate the transition to climate neutrality.

The ESPR will build on the success of the Ecodesign Directive 2009/125/EC by extending its scope beyond energy-related products to cover a very wide range of products across their entire lifecycle, with a focus on long-term sustainability. This regulation helps protect the planet, promotes sustainable business models, and strengthens the competitiveness and resilience of the EU economy.