Environmental Control of Products and Substances: Legal Concepts in Europe and the United States

Traditionally, environmental law has focused on the impacts of industrial plants. There exists a broad range of directives covering the classical environmental issues of air pollution and water pollution in the European Community and in national legislations. Future environmental law and policy will have to consider much more than in the past the effects of products and substances. New models, like concepts for a regulation of material flows, will have to be developed. This volume assembles the contributions of the 1993 Annual Conference of the Environmental Law Network International, which was devoted to this particular issue. After outlining recent developments in the EC and in Central and Eastern Europe, the impacts of substances during the life cycle of a product and the existing regulatory to handle these impacts are being discussed. Further contributions relating to the field of conflict between product control and the internal market are followed by reviews of new instruments that could lead to a better information and control.