Waste management and producer responsibility: a score behind

Editorial

Waste management and producer

responsibility: a score behind –

a new ahead

In 2001, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and

Development (OECD) deﬁned ‘extended producer responsi-

bility’ (EPR) as ‘(...) an environmental policy approach in

which a producer’s responsibility for a product is extended to

the post-consumer stage of a product’s life cycle’. The aim

was to encourage adoption of EPR principles such that man-

ufacturers would design their products to optimize the poten-

tial for recycling the materials and minimize end-of-life

impacts on the waste stream. The EPR concept has since

gained in importance, particularly in Europe, as a key

policy tool. By now, important waste streams such as pack-

aging waste, end-of-life vehicles (ELV), waste electric and

electronic equipment (WEEE) and batteries are regulated

under EPR schemes.

EPR-like elements had already been incorporated into

waste legislation much earlier. In 1991, the German

‘Ordinance on the Avoidance of Packaging Waste’ and the

Green-Dot System became an international model for many

EPR schemes. This ordinance precipitated a radical break

with the traditional, municipality-based waste management

practices. It made producers and retailers organizationally

and ﬁnancially generally responsible for the take-back,

recovery and disposal of packaging waste.

A key question remains: how best to evaluate the eﬀec-

tiveness of EPR programmes in relation to waste prevention,

improved recovery of resources, design for recycling, and

cost eﬀectiveness in recycling?

The achievements in terms of recovery of post-consumer

waste materials are clear. As a result of the ordinance, com-

prehensive, property-close collection of plastics, tin plate and

aluminum cans, and beverage cartons developed within a

short time, expanding the existing paper and glass recycling

schemes. Recycling rates markedly increased and reached

levels of 70 to 90% of the packaging material put on the

market.

With regard to waste prevention, it is clear that over the

past 20 years the total amount of packaging waste in Germany

did not decrease and, despite the existence of EPR schemes, in

many other countries it even increased. The amount of reus-

able bottles used for drinks dropped in Germany from 73.5%

in 1993 to 44.0% in 2009, due to the consumer demand for

one-use polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles.

How have the economics of EPR worked out for packag-

ing waste management over 20 years? In the initial stage, due

to monopoly structures in the German system, consumers

faced increasing product prices due to the additional costs

incurred by manufacturers. In 1993, the levy to cover collec-

tion, sorting and reprocessing of packaging waste amounted

to about 1.50 Ekg

1

of plastic packaging, which is consid-

erably higher than for the disposal of any other type of waste.

At the same time the high system costs in Germany were

aggravating the so called ‘free rider’ phenomenon. In spite

of various eﬀorts to ﬁne-tune the ordinance, some market

participants remained outside the system, enabling them to

avoid incurring costs that others must bear. Nevertheless,

with increasing competition and other market factors, the

cost for the packaging industries to comply with the law

signiﬁcantly declined over time, as did the incremental price

paid by consumers.

Unlike packaging waste, EPR for WEEE evolved largely

in the light of its hazardous content and pollution potential.

Minimum standards for disposal were deﬁned and recycling

quotas set. At the European level, there has been a rapidly

increasing volume of WEEE but only slowly growing return

rates, not only in the new member states but also in devel-

oped countries such as Finland, Austria, Germany or

Belgium. The extent to which these numbers are due to the

export of WEEE as electronic second-hand goods and/or the

unsanctioned co-disposal with municipal solid waste is still

unclear. The increasingly common photos of scavengers

working at electronic waste mounds in Africa and Asia indi-

cate that EPR programmes are not yet suﬃciently eﬀective to

achieve the intended degree of global environmental

protection.

On the other hand, WEEE collected in Europe is

being recycled at rates of between 80 and 95%, although

a few member states score lower. This is surely a success

story! But are those recycling achievements alone suﬃ-

cient to close the loops? Regarding the issue of precious

metals recovery, a comparative analysis between Germany

and the USA shows that, with or without stringent EPR

legislation, the collection rates and total recovery rates

might be diﬀerent but overall losses of valuable metals

such as gold and palladium from small-sized WEEE are

comparable and signiﬁcant, with discard rates of 72 and

75% in Germany and the USA, respectively. The inﬂu-

ence of WEEE legislation on these rates is not yet

measurable.

Waste Management & Research

29(9) 889–890

!The Author(s) 2011

Reprints and permissions:

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DOI: 10.1177/0734242X11419553

wmr.sagepub.com

The ﬁnancial implications of the WEEE directive vary

between member states. In Germany, the national WEEE

law established a highly competitive producer responsibility

system that largely avoids monopoly structures, as compared

to the earlier packaging-related EPR scheme. As a conse-

quence, this law has caused structural changes in the recy-

cling industry, leading to signiﬁcantly decreasing prices for

recycling but also, as some players state, a reducing quality of

recycling.

With regard to optimization in product design, the idea of

EPR suggests a self-regulating feedback loop when the pro-

ducer has to face the expense of recycling and disposing of

the products he sells. Due to relatively short product cycles,

the packaging industry can inﬂuence its recycling cost by

reducing the weight of packaging and by standardizing the

use of materials. The design incentives are, in the case of

WEEE, product inherent lower. Today’s electronics are

designed as highly functional devices and, in general, are

not optimized for high recyclability at the end of the prod-

uct’s lifecycle. Financial incentives to improve the recyclabil-

ity of a product are minimal as the material value and the

end-of-life costs are only a small fraction of the total product

sales price.

How might future EPR systems look in order to enhance

achievement of their objectives?

In the European Union, EPR targets are seen mainly in

terms of achieving high recycling rates and covering a wide

range of products in order to prevent them from entering

landﬁlls. Examples in Japan, Korea and in parts of the

USA show that schemes for more deﬁned product groups

such as PET bottles, computers or mobile phones might be

better adapted to the product speciﬁcs.

In general, collection is one of the bottlenecks in most

EPR schemes in terms of eﬀectiveness and cost. Thus, new

and innovative take-back systems are needed that enable pro-

ducers to have better access to the waste materials associated

with their product’s use and consumption. Customer-paid

deposits or new technologies such as product identiﬁcation

through radio-frequency identiﬁcation are one way, new

business models reorganizing the material ownership of

products might be another.

A key issue for planners of EPR programmes is the inte-

gration of the interests of municipalities, traditionally

responsible for municipal solid waste management, and the

typically private organizations emerging to set up and oper-

ate EPR systems. Municipalities are obliged to share their

traditional tasks and to face varying (usually declining)

waste ﬂows and making related changes to their long-term

waste management plans. Implementation of a full EPR

system means that all parties must deal with ﬂuctuating mar-

kets and prices for recycled materials, precluding the ﬂexibil-

ity of cherry-picking from the waste stream only those

materials with high prevailing prices.

EPR goes beyond national waste policies. Materials for

the production of manufactured items come from all over the

world, customers are often international, and many products

may be subject to subsequent recycling or disposal far from

the country of origin. Hence, EPR is a global issue, present-

ing a challenge to materials and waste managers worldwide,

regardless of boundaries. This calls for the implementation of

EPR programmes worldwide, not only in countries with

sophisticated waste management infrastructures.

Last but not least, the objectives of waste management

and the role of EPR need to be redeﬁned. Waste prevention

and recycling should help to lower the overall environmental

burden of a product. The existence of solely weight-based

recycling targets does not lead to an optimal degree of de-

pollution and resource conservation. Material-speciﬁc targets

for resources that will be scarce in the future should set incen-

tives for diﬀerentiated recycling.

Ultimately one question remains: to what extent are man-

ufacturers the key to the achievement of these objectives?

EPR is a means, not a goal. Dealing with resources respon-

sibly is a challenge not only to producers but also to munic-

ipalities, the recycling industry and, last but not least, to

consumers.

Vera Susanne Rotter

Technische Universita

¨t Berlin, Institute of Environmental

Technology, Berlin, Germany

Email: [email protected]

890 Waste Management & Research 29(9)