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Every year, about one third of all food produced-about 1.3 billion tonnes-is wasted while 1 billion people remain undernourished and another 1 billion go to bed hungry. Households consume 29% of global energy contributing to 21% of carbon dioxide emissions (UNEP, 2020), pointing to the significant linkage between sustainable consumption and production (SCP) and the climate change challenge of ensuring access to renewable energy and the regulation of building standards to reflect best practice in green architecture.

A family in the Global North throws away an average of 30 kg of clothing each year. Only 15% is recycled or donated, and the rest goes directly to the landfill or is incinerated. Every year, 70 million trees in endangered and ancient forests are cut down and replaced by plantations of trees used to make wood-based fabrics, such as rayon, viscose, and modal (Sustain Your Style, 2020).

Sustainable consumption and production: The use of services and related products, which respond to basic needs and bring a better quality of life while minimizing the use of natural resources and toxic materials as well as the emissions of waste and pollutants over the life cycle of the service or product so as not to jeopardise the need of future generations.

Norwegian Ministry of Environment, Oslo Symposium on SCP, 1994

Should the global population reach 9.6 billion by 2050, the equivalent of almost three planets would be required to provide the natural resources needed to sustain current lifestyles (UNEP, 2020). Ensuring SCP has been one of the greatest global challenges over the past fifty years.

Evolution of the "Sustainable Consumption and Production" Theme at the UN

Declarations and plans to take responsibility for sustainable consumption and production patterns have been part and parcel of the United Nations cycle of sustainable development conferences stretching back to the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. The conferences continue trying to respond to scientific and civil society demands to recognize "Spaceship Earth" (Fuller, 1968; Ward, 1966) is a closed system with limited capacity to fuel economic growth and absorb its by-products, including pollution and greenhouse gases.

A ground-breaking initiative came in 1972 with the publication of the report, Limits to Growth, by a network of scientists and industrialists known as the Club of Rome (Meadows et. al., 1972). They commissioned the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to use computer simulations to dramatically demonstrate the futility of the human race we cannot win: the race between our capacity to sustain static stocks of resources and satisfy geometric growth rates in population and consumption.

Arguments for restraints in consumption and a steady-state economy followed with Herman Daly's Toward a Steady-State Economy (1973). This swell of concern had little impact on mainstream debates until 1987 and the publication of the World Commission on Sustainable Development's report, Our Common Future (Brundtland Commission report). This report stressed that meeting essential human needs requires not only a new era of economic growth for nations where the majority remain in poverty, but an assurance that those living in poverty get their fair share of the resources. Equally, the report called on the affluent to adopt lifestyles within the planet's ecological means. It has become increasingly well understood that economic growth as an ideology has been used to disguise and defer tackling the persistent problem of inequality.

Sustainable global development requires that those who are more affluent adopt life-styles within the planet's ecological means-in their use of energy, for example... sustainable development can only be pursued if population size and growth are in harmony with the changing productive potential of the ecosystem.

Our Common Future, Paragraph 29

Five years later, the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit) adopted the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, which called on states to reduce and eliminate unsustainable patterns of production and consumption. After another ten years, the World Summit on Sustainable Development convened in Johannesburg, South Africa, and called for fundamental changes in the way societies produce and consume. This call was accompanied by a mandate for a ten-year framework of programmes (10YFP) to support regional and national initiatives to accelerate the shift toward SCP. This mandate was developed through what was known as the Marrakech Process, launched in 2003, which led to the adoption of the Framework at the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20).

In 2015, the UN adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aim to end poverty and set the world on a path to peace, prosperity, and opportunity on a healthy planet. SDG 12, "Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns," links worldwide consumption and production-a driving force of the global economy-to the use of the natural environment and resources in a way that has destructive impacts on the planet.

Yet with all this attention, the Sustainable Development Goals Report 2020 warned the global material footprint is increasing faster than population growth and economic output. It also notes how improvements in resource efficiency in some countries are offset by increases in intensity in others. Fossil fuel subsidies are also cited as a serious concern, as is the high proportion of food waste lost in long supply chains.

Despite decades of multilateral commitments, the world's reliance on natural resources has accelerated. The SDG Report 2020 observes the material footprint (primary materials required to meet basic needs for food, clothing, water, shelter, infrastructure and other aspects of life) grew from 73.2 billion metric tons in 2010 to 85.9 billion metric tons in 2017, a 17.4% increase in just seven years. In addition, while 79 countries and the European Union reported on at least one national policy instrument contributing to the implementation of the 10YFP between 2017 and 2019, only 10% of all policies reported in 2019 related to economic and financial instruments, reflecting a limited operationalization of the 10YFP vision.

A shift has taken place in the UN discourse on SCP. While the Brundtland Commission focused on inter-generational equity, consumption volumes, and norms, and made an important distinction between addressing justified universal human "needs" and the "felt wants" of elite consuming classes, the language has changed. Now there is a different and more business-friendly focus on innovation and design in methods of production. This has steered the conversation away from norms and new regulations, enshrining the belief that economic growth can be decoupled from environmental degradation and resource depletion (Gasper et al., 2019, p.84) and created a significant blind spot around the role of corporate power to manufacture desire and elite consumer demands using ever more refined tools in the service of the attention economy.

Sustainable Consumption and Production Timeline

The Club of Rome report, Limits to Growth

Highlights the contradiction between static stocks of resources and growth in population and consumption

Herman Daly, Toward a Steady-State Economy

Calls for a steady-state economy, entailing stabilized population and per capita consumption.

World Commission on Environment and Development report, Our Common Future

Distinguishes between human needs and felt wants; highlights an imbalance between the consumption patterns of the wealthy and the poor.

Key Debates about the UN Approach and Conceptual Developments

The fundamental terms of reference for the institutional debates on SCP can be traced back to a challenge to dominant assumptions in neo-classical economic theories that depend on notions of infinite growth and a planet without ecological boundaries. These early debates are populated by a colourful cast of pioneering thinkers and campaigners, notably Andre Gorz, Herman Daly, and Serge Latouche. They have their counterparts today in figures such as Kate Raworth, the author of Doughnut Economics, and the thought leaders on sustainable prosperity and growth, Tim Jackson and Peter Victor. None issued a more formative challenge than Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, the intellectual pioneer of ecological economics and bioeconomics. In his Entropy Law and the Economic Process (1971), Georgescu-Roegen performed for economics the intellectual equivalent of colliding two high-energy particle beams at the speed of light. He did this by bringing physics and the natural sciences into a conversation (or collision) with conventional economics. His writing exposed how the fundamental aim of economic activity-the unlimited growth of production and consumption based on finite sources of matter/energy-is incompatible with the laws of nature. His key contributions to the laws of energy conversion, including the concept of "entropy," explain the degradation of those vital qualities of matter/energy that make them valuable for production and consumption, namely concentration and organization. Matter and energy degradation is countered by a constant inflow of solar energy and other renewable sources of heat and tidal momentum, which explains the current global transition to new sources of energy infrastructure.

Georgescu-Roegen's ideas helped give rise to the degrowth movement-at first focused in the 1970s on resource limits, then re-emerging in the 2000s as a fundamental assault on what Serge Latouche and others have described as the "oxymoron" concept of "sustainable development." The degrowth movement is also associated with the birth of political ecology and attempts to re-locate our environmental challenges within dominant institutional and cultural ideas, including capitalism. Advocates call for the decolonization of public debate and the abolition of economic growth as a primary social objective. Instead, they support alternative social practices of sharing, simplicity, conviviality, care, and commoning that are consistent with equitable downscaling of production and consumption, leading to a reduced societal throughput of energy and raw materials. These practices are pursued in new forms of collaborative consumption and ecovillage communities.

SDG 12-Toward a Systems Approach?

The SCP concept is prominently recognized in the 2030 Agenda. SDG 12 recognizes production and consumption habits are at the root of the planet's sustainability problems and places them at the centre of the sustainable development agenda. Implementation of SDG 12 is linked to the achievement of overall development plans, the reduction of future economic, environmental, and social costs, strengthening economic competitiveness, and the reduction of poverty.

The SDG 12 targets cover a full range of issues, including:

12.1: Implement the 10YFP

12.2: Sustainable management and use of natural resources

12.3: Halve global per capita food waste

12.4: Responsible management of chemicals and waste

12.5: Substantially reduce waste generation

12.6: Encourage companies to adopt sustainable practices and sustainability reporting

12.7: Promote sustainable public procurement practices

12.8: Promote universal understanding of sustainable lifestyles

12.A: Support developing countries' scientific and technological capacity for SCP

12.B: Develop and implement tools to monitor sustainable tourism

12.C: Remove market distortions that encourage wasteful consumption

At the second session of the United Nations Environment Assembly in 2016, the International Resource Panel was mandated to prepare a report, Assessing Global Resource Use: A systems approach to resource efficiency and pollution reduction (2017). The Panel identified decoupling economic activity and human well-being from resource use as an imperative. The report highlighted the complex linkages between human well-being, economic prosperity, and environmental resilience and the need for policy makers to act across all three domains to bring about transformative outcomes.

Adopting a systems approach, the Panel asserted that improving the well-being of people while minimizing resource use and environmental impacts, in particular through enhanced resource efficiency, is necessary to deliver SDG 12 as well as the other SDGs. To achieve this, the Panel supported the transformation of today's "linear" material flows-from extraction to use and disposal-to become "circular" through intelligent design of products that incorporates standardization, reuse, recycling, remanufacturing, the development of efficient and inclusive infrastructure, and a new focus on the delivery of services rather than the sale of material products.

Sustainable Consumption and COVID-19

In his introduction to the SDG Report 2020, UN Secretary-General António Guterres observed the root causes and uneven impacts of COVID-19 have demonstrated why we need the 2030 Agenda. He noted the pandemic has underscored the urgency of implementation and has called for an international response and recovery effort guided by the SDGs. The pandemic has prompted similar responses across the world, notably among advocates of a transformation of economic priorities so that public health and well-being are placed more centrally at the heart of government priorities.

Far from undermining the case for the SDGs, the root causes and uneven impacts of COVID-19 demonstrate precisely why we need the 2030 Agenda...

UN Secretary-General António Guterres, SDG Report 2020

A European research and advocacy initiative, the Foundational Economy, is developing new ways to think about economic policy, placing a focus on healthcare, education, housing, and the food supply. In their manifesto, the organization explains that the well-being of citizens in current and future generations depends less on individual [private] consumption and more on their social consumption of essential goods and services. The distinctive, primary role of public policy should therefore be to secure the supply of basic goods and services in a socially responsible way, and not boost private consumption to deliver economic growth.

Similar arguments have been advanced by a worldwide movement advocating government prioritization of well-being and well-being indicators to help steer qualitative and inclusive economic growth, as a replacement or complement to gross domestic product (GDP).

What Future Do We Want?

Both the climate emergency and the COVID-19 pandemic have accelerated public and governmental understanding of the need to shift our economic paradigm, with calls for "building back better" acknowledging there can be no wholesale retreat to the old economic order. Inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal" in response to the Great Depression in the United States in the early 1930s, proposals for green new deals have proliferated in response to climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The most useful measures of progress toward SCP, however, will not be found in the indicator set used to monitor the progress of the SDGs. The key indicator to look for is a shift from a downstream focus on the re-design of private or corporate production and consumption to an upstream focus on the fundamental drivers of national and international economic priorities. Rather than treating markets, for example, as free-standing entities subject to occasional regulatory intrusions, markets must be regarded once again as outcomes of a social process amenable to democratic decision-making. This must accompany a wholesale shift in how society approaches the core question of what it values and whether we are prepared to continue to allow market exchange and pricing mechanisms a privileged status in determining what is to be valued, produced, and consumed. Until this macro-level economic debate on value is resolved in favour of equality and socio-ecological regeneration it will be difficult to see how market and pricing mechanisms applied to biodiversity, forests, and land can produce long-term shifts in consumption practices.

The economist Mariana Mazzucato is making waves with her powerful calls for a green revolution founded on deliberate and conscious changes in social values: a redirection of the entire economy, transforming production, distribution, and consumption in all sectors in favour of the common good. She has called for the concept of "value" to find its rightful place at the centre of economic reasoning if we are to meaningfully respond to the question: "What future do we want?" To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, the future cannot be left in the hands of cynics-or economists-who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Works Consulted

Botsman, R. (2012). Trusting in strangers. TedGlobal2012. Edinburgh, Scotland. https://www.ted.com/talks/rachel_botsman_the_currency_of_the_new_economy_is_trust/transcript?language=en

Daly, H. (1973). Toward a steady-state economy. W.H. Freeman.

D'Alisa, G., Demaria, F., & Kallis, G. (2015). Degrowth: A vocabulary for a new era. Routledge.

Doran, P. (2017). A political economy of attention, mindfulness and consumerism. Routledge.

Fuller, R.B. (1968). Operating manual for Spaceship Earth. https://designsciencelab.com/resources/OperatingManual_BF.pdf

Gasper, D., Shah, A., & Tankha, S. (2019). The framing of sustainable consumption and production in SDG12. Global Policy, 10, Supplement 1: 83-93.

Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1971). Entropy law and the economic process. Harvard University Press.

Jackson, T. (2018). The post-growth challenge: Secular stagnation, inequality and the limits to growth. CUSP Working Paper 12. University of Surrey.

Jackson, T., & Webster, R. (2016). Limits revisited - A review of the limits to growth debate. Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.21095.91045

Mazzucato, M. (2018). The value of everything: Making and taking in the global economy. Penguin.

Meadows, D.H., et al. (1972). The limits to growth: A report for the Club of Rome's project on the predicament of mankind. Universe Books.

One Planet Network. (2017). One plan for one planet: 5 year strategy 2018-2022. https://spaces.oneplanetnetwork.org/system/files/strategy_one_planet.pdf

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2008). Promoting sustainable consumption: Good practices in OECD countries. https://www.oecd.org/greengrowth/40317373.pdf

Rayworth, K. (2017). Doughnut economics: Seven ways to think Like a 21st century economist. Chelsea Green Publishing.

Sustain Your Style. (2020). Fashion's environmental impacts. https://www.sustainyourstyle.org/en/environmental-impacts

Sustainable Development Solutions Network. (2020). World happiness report. https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2020/

United Nations Environment Programme Resource Panel. (2017). Summary for policymakers - Assessing global resource use: A systems approach to resource efficiency and pollution reduction. https://www.resourcepanel.org/reports/assessing-global-resource-use

United Nations Environment Programme. (2020). GOAL 12: Sustainable consumption and production. https://www.unenvironment.org/explore-topics/sustainable-development-goals/why-do-sustainable-development-goals-matter/goal-12

Ward, B. (1966). Spaceship Earth. Columbia University Press.

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Doing More with Less: Ensuring Sustainable Consumption and Production

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Every year, about one third of all food produced-about 1.3 billion tonnes-is wasted while 1 billion people remain undernourished and another 1 billion go to bed hungry.

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FABSCRAP Helps Fashion Brands Recycle Textile Waste | One Small Step

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How H&M’s Recycling Machines Make New Clothes From Used Apparel | World Wide Waste

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An Essential Development SDG 12 - Priyal

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An Essential Development SDG 12 - Priyal

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The proposed SDG 12 on guaranteeing sustainable consumption and production patterns, despite highlighting a relatively modest concept, likely represents one of the most exemplary changes in the new SDGs. In an increasingly consumption-influenced world, where many admire the Western culture, producing and consuming less is a weighty paradox. This goal is also quite important because the planet cannot sustain the increasing demand for energy, food, water and other vital necessary for sustaining the rising global population, especially the middle class.

An Essential Development Goal

SDG 12 is quite important as it underpins every other Sustainable Development Goal, from Zero Poverty to Peace and Justice. Nevertheless, its idea creates lots of resistance since it poses a significant threat to the status quo, despite being a great social, environmental and economic opportunity. Humankind must now look for ways of doing better and more with less. It is vital to note that this particular SDG covers the consumers and business sectors, and also basic services, supply chains, better jobs and an improved life quality for all.

The world has unequal patterns of life quality and consumption. Examples of this disparity include daily food consumption per capita, the number of cars per person, and also greenhouse gas emissions per capita. Regardless of whichever indicator, it's highly possible that the figures for people in the developed world will be considerably higher than in underdeveloped countries.

The food industry, specifically, accounts for approximately 30% of the total energy consumption in the world and also contributes 22% to greenhouse gas emissions. Hence, the 12th Sustainable Development Goal can only be achieved when every country makes sure that their production and consumption patterns are not undermining the environmental boundaries of the planet, and also the economic and social conditions in the other countries. It is high time we started rethinking our behavioural patterns towards a better sustainable world, especially the underdeveloped and developing nations.

A key proposal in this SDG is to reduce the inequality associated with the utilisation of essential natural resources. Developed nations are asked to lead the way in adopting sustainable consumption and production practices. In effect, it will be possible to enhance the livelihoods of underdeveloped countries and also to lower the resource demand by the affluent. For instance, reducing food waste may have an effect on lowering worldwide food prices, thus, benefitting the poor. Moreover, improving the purchasing power of poor people must ideally be aligned with increased sustainable consumption awareness.

A major requirement for successful adoption and implementation of this SDG is education. Business owners, policy makers, and consumers must know the benefits of demanding and practising sustainable consumption and production. Cooperation between these sectors is going to be very important.

Major targets of SDG 12

Shifting to the targets of SDG 12 will require essential changes in how the society operates, including our livelihoods. Such a large-scale transition is going to take substantial time; therefore given the magnitude and urgency of unsustainable development, and the key role of production and consumption, immediate and forceful action is necessary to start this transition. The SDGs that are projected to be used for 15 years, beginning from 2015, must serve as an effective catalyst for kick-starting this collective societal transformation.

Here are the proposed targets for SDG 12:

Successfully implement the proposed 10-year guideline of programs on sustainable production and consumption, with every country taking action to their best capacity.

Achieve the efficient use and sustainable management of all natural resources by 2030.

Reduce universal food waste in the consumer and retail levels and also lessen food losses in supply chains and production, including losses related to post-harvesting.

Achieve the eco-friendly management of chemical waste throughout its life cycle, based on determined global frameworks, and considerably reduce their pollution of soil, water, and air to reduce their negative effects on our environment and human health.

Profoundly lower the generation of waste through recycling, reuse, prevention and reduction.

Encourage companies, particularly large transnational organisations, to use sustainable practices like integrating sustainability data in their reports.

Promote sustainable public procurement policies, in line with national priorities and policies.

Ensure that everyone in the world has awareness and relevant knowledge of sustainable lifestyles as well as development in agreement with nature.

Support developing nations to increase their technological and scientific capacity so as to start moving towards sustainable production and consumption patterns.

Develop and adopt tools for monitoring effects of sustainable development for a more sustainable tourism, which creates employment opportunities and promotes the local products and culture.

Streamline inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels that promote wasteful consumption through eliminating market distortions, based on the national context, including through phasing out the harmful subsidies and restructuring taxation.

The full implementation of SDG 12 will require defining the major contributors of overconsumption and consumerism, and also unequal consumption in the modern society must be well addressed.

Dealing with only the symptoms, such as the politically and economically less challenging problems (the proverbial low hanging fruits) is not going to produce any significant changes needed to ensure sustainability. Thus, the indicators and implementation plans of this SDG ought to be developed from this viewpoint.

Moreover, SDG 12 as presented in the Sustainable Development Goals should be used in line with the ten-year framework so as to ensure synergies and complementarity. Together, both programs require a wide-ranging set of key indicators, which would consolidate social, economic and environmental elements into a shared framework for easy monitoring of progress.

In effect, a periodic intensive report would show the impact of consumption and production patterns to the health of people and how possibilities of attaining well-being by the future generations are being safeguarded or threatened by current consumption and production activities.
Final Note
Due to the interconnected nature of the planet, local collaborative actions are going to provide universal outcomes. SDG 12 seeks to open a new world to humankind, where not just a few people undertake sustainable consumption, but where reducing, reusing, preventing and recycling will be common for everyone. The effects of such a sustainable lifestyle go beyond preserving the earth's natural resources, as it can help in reducing the increasingly widening gap between the rich and the poor.

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SDG 12 - Ensure sustainable consumption and production

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The proposed SDG 12 on guaranteeing sustainable consumption and production patterns, despite highlighting a relatively modest concept, likely represents one of the most exemplary changes in the new SDGs. In an increasingly consumption-influenced world, where many admire the Western culture, producing and consuming less is a weighty paradox.

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Easy ways to reduce Consumption - Priyal

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Easy ways to reduce Consumption - Priyal

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Professional Decluttering and Organising Service

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The best way to help the environment is to become a more conscious consumer.

When decluttering your home, there's no avoiding the fact that some things may to go to landfill (as we always say to clients, don't make your home the landfill) but at A Tidy Mind, we donate or recycle whatever we can. And (most importantly) encourage conscious consumerism and buying reusable products in the future.

In our experience, most people do care about plastic pollution and do make an effort to recycle. This has to be balanced with other pressures that are upon us in the modern world. No-one needs guilt heaped on them when they already have a million and one things to think about. That will hardly give them the head-space they need to make some changes. Plus, making these micro changes will only go so far and it doesn't get to the root of the problem.

If you need local decluttering support, visit our dedicated pages for A Tidy Mind professional organisers in Surrey /Hampshire/Berkshire, London, Cambridgeshire, Midlands, Cheshire, Yorkshire and North East.

However, the average household can usually significantly reduce their waste and here are some simple tips:

Although recyclable paper straws are available as an alternative to plastic, the better swap is to metal ones which can be used indefinitely. Water and hot drink bottles can also be made from quality and long lasting materials and they feel and look better too.

Regular tap water is absolutely safe to drink but water filtration can provide better tasting and better smelling drinking water by removing chlorine, chemicals, pesticides and heavy metals. Filtering water means you are more likely to fill reusable cups and flasks and avoid buying plastic bottles. The bonus is that you'll save lots of money in doing so.

There are so many ways to pass on your unwanted goods. From donating to charity shops, to hosting 'swap parties' with your friends, to selling locally online. You will support your local community as well as saving waste from entering landfill

Only wash your clothes when necessary (some clothes such as jeans can be worn multiple times) and if using the dryer, consider reusable dryer balls. You'll avoid plastic bottles of fabric softener and save space in your cupboards! Visits to the dry cleaner can be made more environmentally by returning your hangers and bringing clothes in reusable bags.

Sustainable luxury brands might use recyclable materials to create products that not only look good but protect the planet too. Other such companies reinvest their profits to support environmental initiatives. There are many brands making great efforts to use renewable energy or reducing the power they use.

Being a conscious consumer isn't about feeling deprived or boring! Buying the best quality belongings you can afford means you're less likely to have to replace them regularly and by increasing the quality of what you own, you're likely to feel satisfied with less. To further reduce your carbon footprint (and save cash), you could buy preloved. A water filter is a great investment for your home, especially if you want to reduce your consumption and alkaline water filter pitcher is a great help for that. An equity release allows you to invest in something like this without having any capital up front and still reap dividends later on down the line through reduced bills with cleaner water coming from your taps!

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Easy Ways To Reduce Consumption - A Tidy Mind

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Easy Ways To Reduce Consumption - the average household can usually significantly reduce their waste and here are some simple tips:

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Manufacturing and producing goods for the consumers make up the market and the economy. From the initial days, we have been using natural resources to drive up our manufacturing process. It has resulted in elevated depletion of natural resources, higher carbon footprints, and increased pollution.

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SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION - Priyal

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SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION - Priyal

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Learn more about SDG 12 Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns:

Click for the full image

One of the greatest global challenges is to integrate environmental sustainability with economic growth and welfare by decoupling environmental degradation from economic growth and doing more with less. Resource decoupling and impact decoupling are needed to promote sustainable consumption and production patterns and to make the transition towards a greener and more socially inclusive global economy.

To ensure sustainable consumption and production practices necessarily entails to respect the biophysical boundaries of the planet and to reduce current global consumption rates in order to fit with the biophysical capacity to produce ecosystem services and benefits.

UNEA 4. Resolution 1 (UNEP/EA.4/Res.1 ) specifies that a circular economy is one of the current sustainable economic models, in which products and materials are designed in such a way that they can be reused, remanufactured, recycled or recovered and thus maintained in the economy for as long as possible, along with the resources of which they are made, and the generation of waste, especially hazardous waste, is avoided or minimized, and greenhouse gas emissions are prevented or reduced.

UNEP's Economy Division has a project on Global Opportunities for Sustainable Development Goals (GO for SDGs) which aims to strengthen the capacity of countries to achieve SDG 12.

SDG 12 on Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) and UNEP's implementation of SCP and circular economy are fully aligned. Currently, UNEP is developing an SDG 12 Hub which will provide visualization and coordination across SDG 12. This links to UNEP's OnePlanet Initiative for Sustainable Consumption and Production. The OnePlanet Initiative and the SDGs are fully aligned in terms of the monitoring approach. Additionally, the newly developed SCP Hotspots Analysis Tool (SCP-HAT) is an online application with data on the environmental and socio-economic performance of 171 countries over the last 25 years. It allows countries to quickly identify and analyse hotspots at country and sector level and provides key country information in the context of most relevant policy questions.

Launched at HLPF on July 7 th 2021, the SDG 12 Hub is built to support Member States in the achievement of SDG 12, and is the central location for accessing official government reporting against SDG 12 indicators. The SDG 12 Hub consolidates and visualizes the results of national reporting on SDG 12 indicators, and makes these publicly available, allowing Member States to browse progress on SDG 12 by individual targets or by country.

The SDG 12 Hub also provides governments, businesses, civil society and the public with direct and transparent access the data reported by Member States on SDG 12 Targets, as well as linkages to existing knowledge platforms, databases and networks through which stakeholders can share progress, knowledge and solutions for sustainable consumption and production.

Access the Hub here: https://sdg12hub.org
Indicators:
Sustainable growth and development requires minimizing the natural resources and toxic materials used, and the waste and pollutants generated, throughout the entire production and consumption process. Sustainable Development Goal 12 encourages more sustainable consumption and production patterns through various measures, including specific policies and international agreements on the management of materials that are toxic to the environment.
* Agreed methodology only at global level. Not for country level monitoring Partners:
To learn more about UN Environment Programme's contributions to SDG 12:

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goal 12: sustainable consumption and production

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GOAL 12: Sustainable consumption and production

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Learn more about SDG 12 Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns: One of the greatest global challenges is to integrate environmental sustainability with economic growth and welfare by decoupling environmental degradation from economic growth and doing more with less.

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By 2030, achieve the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources.

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Support developing countries to strengthen their scientific and technological capacity to move towards more sustainable patterns of consumption and production

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Support developing countries to strengthen their scientific and technological capacity to move towards more sustainable patterns of consumption and production

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Develop and implement tools to monitor sustainable development impacts for sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products

Rationalize inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption by removing market distortions, in accordance with national circumstances, including by restructuring taxation and phasing out those harmful subsidies, where they exist, to reflect their environmental impacts, taking fully into account the specific needs and conditions of developing countries and minimizing the possible adverse impacts on their development in a manner that protects the poor and the affected communities

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By 2030, ensure that people everywhere have the relevant information and awareness for sustainable development and lifestyles in harmony with nature

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By 2030, ensure that people everywhere have the relevant information and awareness for sustainable development and lifestyles in harmony with nature

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Encourage companies, especially large and transnational companies, to adopt sustainable practices and to integrate sustainability information into their reporting cycle

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Encourage companies, especially large and transnational companies, to adopt sustainable practices and to integrate sustainability information into their reporting cycle

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Promote public procurement practices that are sustainable, in accordance with national policies and priorities

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Promote public procurement practices that are sustainable, in accordance with national policies and priorities

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By 2030, substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse

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By 2030, substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse

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By 2020, achieve the environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle, in accordance with agreed international frameworks, and significantly reduce their release to air, water and soil in order to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment

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By 2020, achieve the environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle, in accordance with agreed international frameworks, and significantly reduce their release to air, water and soil in order to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment

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By 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses

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By 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses

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By 2030, achieve the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources

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By 2030, achieve the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources

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Implement the 10-year framework of programmes on sustainable consumption and production, all countries taking action, with developed countries taking the lead, taking into account the development and capabilities of developing countries

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Implement the 10-year framework of programmes on sustainable consumption and production, all countries taking action, with developed countries taking the lead, taking into account the development and capabilities of developing countries