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Shaping EU Plastic Policies: The Role of Public Health vs. Environmental Arguments

Few other environmental problems have received as much public attention and criticism in recent years as plastic pollution. Accordingly, in recent years, a number of plastic policies have been adopted at the national and supranational level in the EU and worldwide. In the U.S., health risks were rep...

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Autores principales: Mederake, Linda, Knoblauch, Doris
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6843224/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31623078
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16203928
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author Mederake, Linda
Knoblauch, Doris
author_facet Mederake, Linda
Knoblauch, Doris
author_sort Mederake, Linda
collection PubMed
description Few other environmental problems have received as much public attention and criticism in recent years as plastic pollution. Accordingly, in recent years, a number of plastic policies have been adopted at the national and supranational level in the EU and worldwide. In the U.S., health risks were repeatedly raised in the decision-making process of these policies and scholars have pointed out the crucial role of these arguments for the adoption of plastic policies. Hence, this article uses a structuring qualitative content analysis to investigate the parliamentary debates of two recently adopted plastic policies in the EU—namely the EU Plastics Strategy and the Single-Use Plastics Directive—and to assess the relevance of public health and environmental arguments for the EU debate. The analysis reveals broad support for plastics regulation among Members of the European Parliament, who most often use environmental arguments to corroborate their support for the policies in question. In contrast, health concerns do not seem to be crucial for the adoption of plastic policies in the EU.
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spelling pubmed-68432242019-11-25 Shaping EU Plastic Policies: The Role of Public Health vs. Environmental Arguments Mederake, Linda Knoblauch, Doris Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Few other environmental problems have received as much public attention and criticism in recent years as plastic pollution. Accordingly, in recent years, a number of plastic policies have been adopted at the national and supranational level in the EU and worldwide. In the U.S., health risks were repeatedly raised in the decision-making process of these policies and scholars have pointed out the crucial role of these arguments for the adoption of plastic policies. Hence, this article uses a structuring qualitative content analysis to investigate the parliamentary debates of two recently adopted plastic policies in the EU—namely the EU Plastics Strategy and the Single-Use Plastics Directive—and to assess the relevance of public health and environmental arguments for the EU debate. The analysis reveals broad support for plastics regulation among Members of the European Parliament, who most often use environmental arguments to corroborate their support for the policies in question. In contrast, health concerns do not seem to be crucial for the adoption of plastic policies in the EU. MDPI 2019-10-16 2019-10 /pmc/articles/PMC6843224/ /pubmed/31623078 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16203928 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Mederake, Linda
Knoblauch, Doris
Shaping EU Plastic Policies: The Role of Public Health vs. Environmental Arguments
title Shaping EU Plastic Policies: The Role of Public Health vs. Environmental Arguments
title_full Shaping EU Plastic Policies: The Role of Public Health vs. Environmental Arguments
title_fullStr Shaping EU Plastic Policies: The Role of Public Health vs. Environmental Arguments
title_full_unstemmed Shaping EU Plastic Policies: The Role of Public Health vs. Environmental Arguments
title_short Shaping EU Plastic Policies: The Role of Public Health vs. Environmental Arguments
title_sort shaping eu plastic policies: the role of public health vs. environmental arguments
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6843224/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31623078
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16203928
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