Summary report of the conference held on 27-29 September 2007, Ljubljana, Slovenia. This report was prepared by the organisers of the conference 'Time for action — towards sustainable consumption and production in Europe'. Three sets of three top-priority recommendations towards sustainable...

This guide shows how a life cycle approach can be used to identify and reduce the environmental and health impacts of the products we use. It underlines the importance of considering these issues across the entire life cycle of a product and sets them within the context of policy development,...

The consumption of goods and services in EEA member countries is a major driver of global resource use — and associated environmental impacts. Growth in global trade is resulting in an increasing share of environmental pressures and impacts from European consumption taking place beyond Europe....

This report looks at the forces shaping the future of the environment in the Western Balkans, in particular at the role of consumption and production patterns. It begins with a review of key recent environmental trends in the region, then analyses the global, European, regional and national...

This Country Focus studies the development of private consumption in France during the decade before the crisis. Are French consumers greater spendthrifts than their European fellows? In this paper, we estimate a consumption function to show that strong growth of private consumption in France...

In Germany private consumption virtually stagnated for nearly a decade and clearly lagged behind GDP growth. This Country Focus uses the estimation of a consumption function to show that the drop in employment is the most important factor behind the reluctance to consume in the first half of...