Extended producer responsibility (EPR) is an environmental policy strategy that makes producers responsible for the waste management of their products and packages. A key goal of EPR is to incentivize producers to (re)design their products and packages to improve their environmental performance, especially at end of life. However, because of the way in which the financial structure of EPR has evolved, those incentives have largely been muted or undetectable. Eco-modulation has emerged as an additional component in EPR to restore the missing incentives for eco-design. Eco-modulation operates through changes in the fees that producers pay to meet their EPR obligations. Eco-modulation includes both increased differentiation of types of products and associated fees, and additional bonuses and penalties--environmentally targeted discounts and surcharges on the fees that each producer pays.Eco-modulation faces challenges if it is to restore the incentives for eco-design. These include weak linkages to environmental outcomes, fees that may be too low to induce changes in materials or design, lack of adequate data and ex post policy evaluation, and implementation that differs across jurisdictions. Opportunities to address these challenges include use of life cycle assessment to inform eco-modulation, increased eco-modulation fees, strategies to increase harmonization of eco-modulation implementation, mandated provision of data, and policy evaluation tools that establish the efficacy of different eco-modulation schemes. Considering the scope of the challenges and the complexity of establishing eco-modulation programs, we suggest treating eco-modulation at this stage as an experiment on promoting eco-design.
This report updates the 2001 Guidance Manual for Governments on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), which provided a broad overview of the key issues, general considerations, and the potential benefits and costs associated with producer responsibility for managing the waste generated by their products put on the market. Since then, EPR policies to help improve recycling and reduce landfilling have been widely adopted in most OECD countries; product coverage has been expanded in key sectors such as packaging, electronics, batteries and vehicles; and EPR schemes are spreading in emerging economies in Asia, Africa and South America, making it relevant to address the differing policy contexts in developing countries. In light of all of the changes in the broader global context, this updated review of the guidelines looks at some of the new design and implementation challenges and opportunities of EPR policies, takes into account recent efforts undertaken by governments to better assess the cost and environmental effectiveness of EPR and its overall impact on the market, and addresses some of the specific issues in emerging market economies.
This dissertation, "The Effectiveness of Extended Producer Responsibility in Motivating Eco-design Changes: Perspectives From China's Electrical and Electronics Industry" by Jieqiong, Yu, 余洁琼, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Extended producer responsibility (EPR) as a holistic approach to product stewardship has been increasingly incorporated into environmental policy agenda in the last two decades. One major expectation of EPR is to prevent environmental problems at source by providing appropriate incentives for product eco-design changes. However, available studies empirically examining the actual influence of EPR on eco-design are limited. This research therefore aims to fill the research gap by evaluating the effectiveness of existing EPR programmes in driving eco-design changes from the perspective of China's electrical and electronic (EE) industry, and shed some light on the prospects of EPR development in China. Based on the analytical framework developed from reconstructed intervention theory, three intensive empirical studies have been carried out. The first study examines the perception and responses of 50 China's EE manufacturers regarding the EU EPR programmes (i.e. the WEEE and RoHS Directives). The second study investigates the responses of 36 China's EE manufacturers to the Chinese EPR programmes (i.e. China WEEE and China RoHS legislation) and identifies possible factors that exert causal impact on the occurrence of eco-design. In order to gain a deeper insight into the practical manifestations of effective EPR implementation in the private sector, three company case studies have been conducted in the third stage of the research, serving as an important supplement to the first two studies. The three studies show that EPR programmes in a stringent regulatory approach focusing on products' environmental properties such as substance bans can exert strong influence on design changes. However, mandated recycling legislation seems to have little driving effect for companies to change product design. The research points to the weakness of collective producer responsibility that is currently adopted in many EU Member States for WEEE implementation in achieving continuous eco-design improvements. It highlights the significance of realising the principle of individual producer responsibility in EPR programmes for achieving this goal. Based on an attributability assessment, the research further shows that there are a number of factors that influence the adoption of eco-design in China, and the link between legislative EPR programmes and eco-design is complex and evolving. Not only may the EPR programmes have different existing, anticipating and potential effect on the incorporation of eco-design, but they may have very different driving influence on environmental laggards and leaders. In this regard, this research suggests that there is no one-stop solution for EPR in China. A mixed mechanism that integrates various policy instruments such as administrative, economic and informative instruments, in conjunction with cooperation and infrastructure facilities, would be the most effective means to implement EPR in the context of China, thereby achieving the goal of sustainable production and consumption. DOI: 10.5353/th_b4718593 Subjects: Electronic industries - Environmental aspects - China Electronic apparatus and appliances - Environmental aspects - China Social responsibility of business - China
This report updates the 2001 Guidance Manual for Governments on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), which provided a broad overview of the key issues, general considerations, and the potential benefits and costs associated with producer responsibility for managing the waste.
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation aims to create incentives for producers to design products that are easier to recycle. In this paper, we study whether a collective EPR implementation, which is common in practice due to its cost efficiency advantage, can achieve this goal. In particular, we look for cost allocation mechanisms in a collective system that provide at least as effective design incentives as those induced by an individual system benchmark, while ensuring voluntary participation of producers (i.e. satisfying group incentive compatibility). Based on a biform network game model, we show that a cost allocation mechanism that satisfies the above criteria exists only if the recycling infrastructure satisfies certain properties in terms of (i) how recycling costs change as a function of design choices and (ii) the processing capacity mix relative to the return volume. Otherwise, a cost allocation mechanism that leads to effective design incentives can only guarantee individual rationality but not group incentive compatibility. This indicates a critical tradeoff between producers' design incentives and their voluntary participation in a collective system. That is, participation by enforcement may be required for a policy maker to induce superior designs and maintain a stable collective implementation (and therefore realize its cost efficiency advantage). If this is not feasible, then one needs to accept collective implementations as enablers of cost-efficiency at the expense of inferior design incentives, and find other means (i.e., other forms of regulatory intervention) besides cost allocation to provide design incentives.
A core characteristic of extended producer responsibility (EPR) policies is that they place some responsibility for a product's end-of-life environmental impacts on the original producer and seller of that product. The intent is to provide incentives for producers to make design changes that reduce waste, such as improving product recyclability and reusability, reducing material usage, and downsizing products. This paper assesses whether the range of policies that fall under the EPR umbrella can spur this 'design for environment' (DfE). It summarizes the economics literature on the issue and describes conceptually how policies should affect design. It then analyzes three case studies in detail and two more case studies more briefly. The conclusion reached is that some DfE - especially reductions in material use and product downsizing - can be achieved with most EPR policies, including producer take-back mandates and combined fee/subsidy approaches. However, none of these alternative policies as they are currently implemented are likely to have a large impact on other aspects of DfE.
The concept of a circular economy has been gaining increasing attention in recent years. Many of the sources of chemicals we have become reliant on are dwindling and the accumulation of waste products poses a serious environmental problem. By recovering resources from these waste materials, we can reduce our dependence on virgin feedstocks that may not be sustainable as well as reducing the quantity of material going to landfill sites. Incorporating different perspectives from a global authorship, this book aims to introduce systems thinking to the field of waste and resource management. The topics covered range from the use of biogeochemical processes in resource recovery to the application of engineered nanomaterials, with information relevant to both academia and industry. The broad range and cross-disciplinary nature of the topics in this book make it a valuable resource for those working in circular economy research, green chemistry and waste and resource management.
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), a policy approach in which the responsibility of the waste from a consumer good is extended back up to the producer of the good, is developing and expanding in OECD countries. Work on EPR started in 1994 and OECD published an EPR guidance manual in 2001. Governments find that these schemes can provide a new and flexible approach to reduce the upward trend of waste from consumer products. To further analyse the concept, OECD organised a workshop in 11-12 December 2002, which was hosted by the Japanese Ministry of Environment, in Tokyo. This book contains selected papers presented at this workshop. The selected papers specifically addressed the following issues: EPR policy goals; evaluation of the performance of four national EPR schemes; technical innovation Dan EPR policies; political economy for implementing EPR policies; and EPR and cost sharing along the production chain
We analyze product design implications of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)-based take-back legislation on durable goods. In particular, we observe that durable product design incentives under EPR may involve an inherent trade-off that has not been explored to date: Durable goods producers can respond to EPR by making their products either more recyclable or more durable, where the former will decrease the unit recycling cost whereas the latter will reduce the volume the producer has to recycle. When these two design attributes do not go hand-in-hand, as is the case for many product categories, product design implications of EPR can be subtle. We find that seemingly similar EPR implementation levers, namely recycling and collection targets, may have opposing effects in driving producers' design choices. Furthermore, more stringent legislative targets do not always guarantee improved product recyclability and durability. In particular, if the objective of EPR is to induce recyclable product designs, a low recycling target accompanied with a high collection target is preferred. On the other hand, if the objective of EPR is to induce durable product designs, a low collection target accompanied with a high recycling target is preferred.
