The history of EPR

Europe as a frontrunner

The first EPR programme was put in place in Germany in 1991 with the advent of the German Packaging Ordinance. The Packaging Ordinance held producers responsible for managing packaging waste (which accounted for one-third by weight and one-half by volume of municipal waste).

The Packaging Ordinance resulted in the Duales System Deutschland (DSD), a non-profit company, which licenses its logo - the green dot - for a fee. Packages bearing the symbol are collected, sorted, and directed to recyclers by DSD. Fees are based on the material and weight of the package and are paid by the "filler" - usually the owner of the product brand name.

Official statistics indicate that the long-term trend of annually increasing packaging consumption in Germany was reversed in the years following the passage of the Packaging Ordinance. Between 1991 and 1995, packaging consumption decreased by about one million tons. According to EPA data, packaging consumption in the United States during the same period increased 13 percent. Packaging recycling in Germany also increased from 52% in 1993 to 84% in 1996.

The Packaging Ordinance has also stimulated development of new sorting and recycling technologies, with Germany's export of environmental technologies only slightly less than those of the United States, which has an economy and population three times as large.

In 1994 the European Union issued its own Packaging Directive. This directive embraced the concept of EPR and mandated recycling targets for packaging waste of 25 to 45%, with a minimum 15% recycling rate for each material. As a result, all 15 member countries will ultimately have EPR systems for packaging. Korea and Taiwan are also adopting EPR policies, and Japan's law requiring EPR for packaging was passed in 1995 and went into effect in 1997. In total, twenty-eight countries now have packaging take-back laws.

There is however great variation between EPR programs for packaging, with major differences relating to:

• The allocation of responsibility between government and industry
• The level of mandated recycling rates
• The time frame for achieving mandated recycling rates
• What counts as recycling
• What packaging materials are included in the program
• The types of collection systems used
• The use of deposit/refund mechanisms
• Implementation through third-party organisations

However, there are three key elements that all EPR policies (outside the United States) have in common:

• They extend responsibility to the post-consumer stage.
• The responsibility of the producer is always physical and/or financial - producers either physically take back and recycle their products or pay a third party to do so.
• Guidelines (usually set by government) require specific recycling rates, define what counts as recycling, and require data collection and reporting.

Germany shifted full responsibility for managing packaging waste to industry.
In France and Japan, municipalities remain responsible for waste collection and industry was made responsible only for the recycling of certain materials.
Britain's packaging scheme allocates a specific percentage of the responsibility to each industry player: 47% for retailers, 36% for packers and fillers, 11% for converters and 6% for raw material processors.

As take back and recycling of packaging by each individual producer is not always practical, EPR policies usually permit producers to form "producer responsibility organizations" (PROs) which enable them to fulfill their responsibilities collectively.
These organisations license their logos for a fee and use the revenues to finance collection and recycling. It is important that the fee structures imposed by PROs reward companies that choose to design less wasteful and more economically recyclable products.

PROs include the Duales System Deutschland (DSD) in Germany, Eco-Emballages in France, Alstoff Recycling in Austria, Fost Plus in Belgium, VALPAK in the United Kingdom and the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation (RBRC) in the United States.

Other types of EPR are in place for Electric and Electronic Equipment and for end-of-life vehicles.

Electric and electronic equipment (EEE) is a major focus of EPR policies around the world. Already Switzerland, the Netherlands, Italy, Norway and Japan have EEE policies in place and the EU is developing its own directive to harmonize policies in Europe.

Vehicle recycling is well established, with about 75% of a vehicles weight consisting of iron and steel. The target for EPR is the remaining 25% of mixed materials.

Both Germany and France have negotiated take back policies on end-of-life vehicles (ELV) with industry, Sweden has passed legislation requiring EPR for vehicles and Japan is developing legislation. A common target in most programs is a 95% recovery rate for 2015, meaning that only 5% of ELV's would be permitted in landfills by that date.

Led by Germany's producers, European vehicle manufacturers have been planning for the advent of EPR since the early '90s, redesigning their vehicles for disassembly and recycling. Strategies include increasing recycling content, reducing the number of plastic resins, labeling plastics, marking parts to permit draining of fluids (so recycling feedstock is not contaminated), and using fasteners that facilitate disassembly.

EPR has already had major impacts on the three R's (reduce, reuse, recycle) and on product and package design - impacts that have spread well beyond the borders of the countries that have EPR policies in place.

The major impetus for EPR has come in countries experiencing severe shortages of landfill capacity. But the policy's environmental benefits go well beyond reducing pressure on disposal facilities.
Well-designed EPR programs encourage both source reduction and recycling, and therefore result in reduced energy and materials consumption and reduced toxicity of products.
When consumption of energy and materials decreases, the environmental impacts associated with these activities - such as air and water emissions - also decline substantially.
Therefore, EPR can be viewed not only as a mechanism to divert materials from disposal but as an important strategy for sustainability.

(Adapted from a preprint of an article: Betty K. Fishbein, EPR: What Does It Mean? Where Is It Headed? P2: Pollution Prevention Review, pp. 43-55, Volume 8 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)

Other references:

Beverley Thorpe and Iza Kruszewska, Strategies To Promote Clean Production - Extended Producer Responsibility, Clean Production Action, January 1999, http://www.grrn.org/resources/BevEPR.html

Carola Hanisch, Is Extended Producer Responsibility Effective?, Environmental Science and Technology, April 1, 2000/Volume 34, Issue 7/ pp170 or http://pubs.acs.org/hotartcl/est/00/apr/hanis.html