Federal Act
on the Protection of the Environment
(Environmental Protection Act, EPA)

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion and, with­in the scope of their re­spons­ib­il­it­ies, the can­tons shall co­oper­ate with private sec­tor or­gan­isa­tions in en­for­cing this Act.

² They may pro­mote sec­tor­al agree­ments by set­ting quant­it­at­ive tar­gets and dead­lines for meet­ing them.

³ Be­fore en­act­ing im­ple­ment­ing reg­u­la­tions, they must ex­am­ine vol­un­tary private sec­tor meas­ures. Wherever pos­sible and ne­ces­sary, they shall in­cor­por­ate sec­tor­al agree­ments in­to the im­ple­ment­ing reg­u­la­tions in whole or in part.

⁴ When en­act­ing the im­ple­ment­ing pro­vi­sions, they shall take ac­count of vol­un­tary meas­ures already taken by com­pan­ies, provided these have at least the same ef­fect on en­vir­on­ment­al pro­tec­tion as the im­ple­ment­ing le­gis­la­tion.¹¹¹