The Legal Model of the Circular Economy

One of the most important factors in achieving sustainable development goals, ensuring environmental security, and building a circular economy within the country is the development and implementation of an effective legal model for the regulation of environmental relations and related economic incentives and mechanisms. To this end, domestic environmental legislation has been substantially modernized in recent years as part of the implementation of waste management reform and the updating of legislation based on the response to major man-made accidents that have occurred. These changes have resonated widely and generated much discussion in the business, expert, and scientific communities. The most controversial of these issues include the introduction of expanded responsibility on the part of producers and importers for product waste disposal and other innovations in the process of building a circular economy under the Federal Act on Industrial and Consumer Waste and the December 2021 amendment to the Federal Act on Environmental Protection to isolate funds raised from environmental charges and administrative fines for environmental offences. These legal and economic measures aimed at protecting the environment are new to the environmental legislation of the Russian Federation, and the positive and negative aspects of their introduction and the implementation mechanism need to be analyzed in detail.