Voluntary Commitments from industry are one of the most promising approaches to successfully bridge corporate and government roles and make effective progress on sustainable development.

But industry's commitments to sustainable development, cannot only be related to the strict improvement of processes and products. The European PVC industry's commitment to sustainable development includes research, dialogue, exchange of views and education.

The ongoing frank and open dialogue with stakeholders, third parties, institutions and organisations within technical, political and social communities is of paramount importance to Vinyl 2010 to exchange views on studies, experiences and good practices. But we also believe that it is important to address and engage the younger generation. Sustainable development concerns us all, especially younger generations who will have to live tomorrow with the consequences of decisions taken today.

To encourage deeper reflection, thus, Vinyl 2010, in partnership with a number of European universities, NGOs, student associations and media, launched its first Sustainable Development Essay Competition in November 2007. Open to 18-30 year old citizens of the European Economic Area, the first competition asked entrants to respond to the question ‘Are sustainable development and economic growth mutually exclusive?' in a 1,000-word journalistic essay in English.

In early 2008, entries were judged by a panel of leading European sustainable development experts from academia, NGOs and the media under the chairmanship of Mrs. Nadine Gouzée, Head of the Sustainable Development Task Force for the Federal Planning Bureau of Belgium.

The prize-winners of this first competition - Maja Derčar (Slovenia), Daniela Jungova (the Czech Republic) and Francesco Falcone (Italy) - were also given the opportunity to join a panel of experts in sustainable development from the worlds of academia, media and politics in a 'Café Crossfire' debate in front of an industry audience organised in conjunction with the Brussels' based think-tank Friends of Europe. 

The full set of essays from the 2007/8 have been collected together in a book published by Vinyl 2010, thet has been widely distributed to stakeholders and was presented at Green Week 2008 and at the UN CSD-16 in New York providing a unique platform for young people to express their opinions.

Building on the success of Vinyl 2010 first Sustainable Development Essay Competition, which attracted entries from 14 European Member States, a second Essay Competition was launched in October 2008. This time open to young people worldwide with Ms. Selene Biffi, coordinator of the UN Major Group Children and Youth and founder of the Youth Action for Change (YAC) organisation, joining other leading European sustainable development experts on the panel of judges. 

The 2008/9 competition posed the question ‘Faced with a food and energy crisis, how can society improve its well-being?'.

A dedicated website/blog was created to maximise the reach of the competition and generate a dynamic exchange of ideas. By 01 December 2008 pre-registration deadline, 927 people representing 89 different nationalities had signed up to take part in the Essay Competition.  Registrations were received not only from young people across 27 states in the European Economic Area (EEA), but also from 62 other countries worldwide. Out of those, a total of 200 submissions were finally received. 

Winners of the 2008/9 edition were Jon Elms, Fiona Wright, and Robert McSweeney, all from the United Kingdom, for the European Prize Category, and Christian Williams from New Zealand for the Global Prize Category. The Special Industry Prize winner is Wei Chao Zhou from Singapore. All of the essays were of very high quality, presenting well-informed, strongly argued ideas. In the end the final winner were the ones that better presented constructive, well thought-out and realistic ideas that could make an actual impact on the debate on the food and energy crises.

Click here to read the Essay Competition 2008/2009 in a ebook format

Click here to read the essay from the first Vinyl 2010 Essay Competition in the ebook format