EPR Certificate: Right to Getting
Extended Producer
Responsibility (EPR) can be
a strong rule principle in the waste organization. Over the years it has been introducing
worldwide for the dissimilar waste stream. Based on its European experience ISWA
defines some key considerations for the successful implementation of EPR throughout
the world.
By uneven responsibility
for certain crop once they have become waste from taxpayers to customers and producers, Extended Producer Responsibility
(EPR) enables an internalization of the effects of consumption. EPR has been implementing
with mixed success. In some countries, it has been implemented through clear
legislation and shaped working cooperation between governments, producers and
waste management organizations. In additional countries, the implementation of
EPR has turned out to be a failure due to a lack of internalization of
environmental expenses as well as the inadequate quality of collection service to
the public.
EPR’s Background
Issues of environmental
protection were first discussed in policy circles in the 1970s. Since then a
number of fundamental principles of sustainable development such as the
'precautionary principle', the principle of 'prevention' and the 'polluter
pay' principle, have slowly become fundamental to policy development both
within the EU and internationally. The concept of EPR was primarily introduced by
Thomas Lindquist, professor at Lund University in Sweden. In 1990, he wrote
a report for the Swedish Ministry of Environment about this policy principle
that places responsibility for a product's end-of-life impact on the creator
and retailer of that product. The necessity for the introduction of EPR comes
from the rising awareness that other environmental policy measures might not be
enough to reach the environmental goal of society.
The responsibility of
the producer can be physical, financial and/or informational. According to the
OECD, internalization of external environmental costs is wary a fundamental aspect
of environmental policy design and more specifically of EPR and these tenets
have now been formally included in the EU Waste structure Directive. Although
producers have the primary responsibility under EPR, all actors of the production
chain and in society have accountability.
Objectives
of EPR
1 Create a sustainable
production and consumption policy
EPR is a key constituent
in implementing a sustainable production and consumption policy, promoting
resource efficiency, high-quality recycling, replacement, use of secondary raw
materials and the production of sustainable goods. As a result, it should
improve the environmental performance of products throughout their life cycle,
while gathering industrial and customer needs.
2 Incentives for eco-design
Introduce of EPR,
producers should be encouraged to incorporate change in the plan of products in
order to be more environmentally sound. This should make products easier to
dismantle, reuse and recycle. In this way, the sum ecological crash of a product
decrease and waste prevention is stimulated.
3. Reduce landfilling
and develop recycling and recovery channels
EPR should reduce land
filling of waste and lead to greater than before recycling, under
environmentally, healthy and socially desirable situation. In this way, EPR can
make meaningful jobs in the recycle and waste management sector.
4. Full internalization
of environmental costs
The full internalization
of environmental costs allows financing the sustainable and cost-effectively
efficient management of misuse. The environmental costs, at the smallest amount,
include costs for pollution prevention and the collection, recycling, and
treatment of waste. These environmental costs should be incorporated into the
price of the crop. As a consequence, the consumer, and not the taxpayer, bears all
costs connected to the waste he has produced, which is more publicly fair.
Impact
of EPR
In 2006, Van Rossem et
al. concluded there is together implicit and explicit evidence of the impact of
EPR on product design. Even though it is documented that determinants of
product innovation are coming from a diversity of push and pull factors such as
legislation, customer preferences, EPR does give tangible incentives for
environmentally-conscious plan.
More specifically, EPR
legislation had a crash on hazardous materials reduction and improved
recyclability and recycling of products. The researchers finished that the
drivers of ecodesign are strengthened when there is criticism on the total
end-of-life expenses to individual producers. They did not only see an impact
on the design of the new crop but also saw considerable improvements in the
collection of discarded products and activities of these products. Furthermore,
research by INSEAD concluded that the implementation of the WEEE Directive has
led to an increase in the collection and recycling of WEEE. When it comes to shifting
the financial responsibility from the general taxpayer towards the creator, Van
Rossem et al. concluded that municipalities in at least nine countries still
had the compulsion to finance the compilation of WEEE from a household in 2006.
Extensive research by
the European Commission on 36 case study of EPR on different waste stream in
the European Union revealed that in most of the benchmark bags, the net
operational costs for collection, transportation, and action of separately the collected waste is covered by the EPR system.
The degree to which net ready
costs are assumed by the producer is highly variable and depends notably on the
share of organizational and financial responsibilities of the variety of
stockholder, as well as on the national structure for EPR.
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