Sustainability, Circular Economy and Consumer Law in Switzerland

Switzerland, the EU and its Members States have all recognized the 17 United Nations Sustainable Goals. Goal 12 is to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns. The pursuit of this objective offers new opportunities for analysis and development in contract law, consumer law and in the field of unfair commercial practices. However, although some changes are underway these areas often remain viewed through the traditional lens of protecting the economic interests of consumers as a weaker party zur Fussnote 5, without usually taking environmental considerations into account. In light of the ongoing climate crisis , the need (i) to concretely protect the environment (ii) to put in place environmentally sustainable consumption patterns as well as (iii) to adopt a more circular economy are pressing. To reach these goals, observers note that solutions can no longer be confined to national consumer laws but international cooperation in this area is needed. As a country located in the centre of Europe, the European Green Deal (December 2019), the New Circular Economy Action Plan (March 2020) and further developments based on these initiatives are also of great practical importance for Switzerland.

This paper assesses Swiss consumer law from the perspective of environmental sustainability and the circular economy. The objective is to present the general state of the law in this respect, considering important achievements and ongoing developments at the European level. To this end, we first present the Swiss legal framework of consumer protection and consumer contracts, as well as sustainable development and circular economy (II). We then conduct a “sustainability check” of Swiss consumer law (III), before concluding (IV)