Regulation, self-regulation and environmental consensus: lessons from the UK packaging waste experience

✍ Scribed by Sally Eden

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 127 KB
• Volume: 6
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0964-4733
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0836(199709)6:4<232::aid-bse114>3.0.co;2-4

✦ Synopsis

This paper uses the case study of UK packaging waste policy to illustrate the problems of developing environmental self-regulation. In July 1993, the UK Secretary of State for the Environment `challenged' British business to organise and run a self-regulatory scheme to recover between 50 and 75 per cent of packaging waste by 2000. But the response was dogged by differences of opinion within business and a lack of political will from business and government. Consequently, the businesses approached to develop this scheme declared self-regulation unworkable and lobbied government to introduce national legislation. This case study suggests that self-regulation works best where it ®ts the status quo by formalising existing practices or encourages incremental change to those practices. Where major changes to the status quo are needed, self-regulation may founder because it fails to bind together diverse sectors and companies which are differentially threatened by those changes and thereby fails to ensure voluntary compliance.