Polluter pays?
The EU principle imposed on member states
EU environmental policy aims to ensure that all EU citizens live in a healthy and safe environment. In recent decades, there has been a significant decrease in emissions of pollutants to air, water, and soil, but pollution and environmental damage remain a major challenge.
The European Union has required member states to apply a principle aimed at protecting the environment: “Polluter pays.”
This is a common-sense principle in that those who are responsible for activities that cause pollution must remedy them by cleaning up polluted air and covering the health costs of those affected.
European states are asked to provide measures to “encourage the design of products and their components to reduce environmental impacts and the generation of waste during production and subsequent use, but also aimed at ensuring that waste recovery and disposal take place according to criteria that follow environmental protection.”[Official Journal]
This decision aims to mitigate the negative effects of pollution by providing a moral and legal imperative for action.
The ”Polluter Pays” principle has contributed to the formulation of policy measures that have enabled decisive action to identify the sources of pollution and related liability.
For example, some economic activities known to release pollutants have had to install filters to reduce pollutant emissions or establish sectoral compensation funds.
Sometimes even in simple cases where it is possible to identify polluters, application of the principle can be difficult.
Polluters may be unable to pay, and the parent company or shareholders may not always be held accountable for the activities of a subsidiary.
Even if so, court proceedings are often very lengthy and costly.
How do we know ”who is polluting”?
It is not easy to track and identify who is polluting and link it to the people affected.
Pollution can be caused by pollutants from different sources and places, some of which may lie across international borders.
In most cases, these activities produce products and services, such as food, clothing and transportation that we as individuals and as a society benefit from. Thus it is difficult to hold only the operator responsible considering that society as a whole bears the costs.
To prevent pollution or harmful activities, measures taken could include the imposition of taxes, pollution quotas or certain technological solutions.
For example, Europe is introducing cleaner fuels and gradually reducing carbon emissions from new cars.
So what should companies do?
Italian companies are being asked to produce products that will be evaluated for their social, environmental and health impacts.
In fact, Europe is pushing this by following the principles of the circular economy for environmental protection reasons.
This will enable products to retain their value for as long as possible by reducing the need for raw materials and resources and the generation of waste.
New regulations on waste management are pushing companies to create systems that involve the sustainable use of resources, the reduction and better management of waste, and the adoption of sustainable practices.
This implies for companies, greater responsibilities on the design and evaluation of products involving their qualification and recycling.
The environmental costs of economic activities in Italy
According to the UVI – Office of Impact Assessment – of the Senate, external environmental costs are those damages, generated by an economic or social activity, that fall on third parties in the form of health effects, damage to economic assets and activities or on the environment through the effects on natural capital and ecosystems.
Most of the external costs are due to the productive sectors of the economy (33.6 billion, accounting for 66.9% of the total), while household activities contribute 16.6 billion (33.1%).
Industry has the highest external environmental costs (13.9 billion euros), followed by agriculture (10.9 billion).
Domestic heating ranks third (9.4 billion) surpassing the external costs of household transportation (7 billion).
The pollutants most relevant to health and environmental damage are particulate emissions, which contribute about 29% of external costs, and CO2 emissions with 22%.
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