WILL EXTENDED PRODUCER RESPONSIBILITY MOVE EVERYTHING TOWARD THE ZERO WASTE PARADIGM?
by Tom Wright, SustainableBizness.com
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is the extension of the responsibility of producers for the environmental impacts of their products and packaging for the entire product life cycle - especially for the take-back, recycling and composting of these products, as well as the potential disposal of toxic substances. EPR is based on the 'polluter pays' principle. The simple idea is to get true-costs into the product, so that the market responds authentically and recovery of the resource becomes more probable.

As it is, we have inappropriate prices - artificially low, in a so-called free market system. 'Cheap' gets promoted, profits are privatized and externalities get hoisted onto the public's budgets or the ecological commons. Let's propose transferring responsibility for product and packaging disposal, recycling or composting costs from local towns to resin makers, brand owners and first importers.

Bill McDonough, co-author of Cradle-to-Cradle And “Being Less Bad Is Not Being Good”, puts it this way: “There are two fundamental frameworks for metabolism: biological and technical nutrients. So we ask a company, ‘Are your materials safe and healthy for human and ecological systems?  Do you have reverse logistics – do we know where this stuff comes from, where it goes, and how to get it back and it onto closed, zero-waste cycles?”

If we can’t reuse it, recycle it or compost it, industry shouldn’t be making it. To even begin to approach zero waste -- whether that's 90% diversion or more -- we need better industrial design for this 21st Century.

Most EPR legislation has focused on two main groups: "toxics/dangerous" - batteries, electronics, paints, sharps, etc., and some beverage packaging. There are 10 deposit states plus the nation state of Canada with deposit on various types of beverage packaging - but no way ALL beverages! The 'bottle bill' states recycle the big five: #1 and #2 rigid plastics, glass, metals, paper/fiber at 80% plus recovery rates; the remaining 40 states are below 30%. Steve Young, of Allan Company, has suggested that if we can't agree to a national bottle bill, at least get Texas and Florida involved, because that would fill in some major national gaps in the system.

As for the 'stuff' that is dangerous or toxic, 12 states have some form of EPR legislation within these categories. Let’s add the Precautionary Principle to these frameworks, which states that if the potential consequences of an action are severe or irreversible, in the absence of full scientific certainty, the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action, or creating the product - e.g. think of pesticides or certain pharmaceuticals.

As You Sow, the SF based non-profit, recently published “Waste & Opportunity: U.S. Beverage Container Recycling Scorecard and Report”.  Surveys were sent to 45 companies; ten responded and those companies were graded on their efforts. The Report found several brands, including Coca-Cola and Nestlé Waters, would support the advancement of EPR legislation. This represents a new stance from leading companies, one that could prove significant if change is to occur.

In Canada and Europe, where EPR laws are already in place, beverage containers are recovered at a much higher rate than the estimated 29% by container weight achieved in the United States. The report indicates a direct link between container recovery rates and the ability of manufacturers to incorporate recycled content, rPET (#1), into new bottles. “We note that several companies said they couldn’t make solid commitments to close the loop faster because they were having trouble getting adequate supplies of post-consumer PET,” stated Conrad MacKerron, of As You Sow’s Corporate Social Responsibility Program.

MacKerron also concluded that the option for increasing recovery rates is more consumer deposit laws; yet beverage companies are opposed to this solution, they tend to feel 'picked-on': that is, you have deposit on your Coke bottle, but not your Tide container, why is that?  Also the various states have a wide range of logistics for deposit return, and create more recovery costs than they should, i.e. the deposit is too high: that burden is shifted to only specific beverage containers, and not shared by other packaging and containers.

Unfortunately in the EU, incineration is considered part of the zero waste solution; most likely because of such limited landfill space. Yet so-called waste-to-energy facilities are not clean energy solutions: as they keep the 'polluting' stuff coming in as feedstock. And BTU value, even if it goes up in the future, keeps the pedal on 'more energy' rather keeping embodied energy in a resource recovery.

If one was to do a waste characterization, and here purely as an example: San Francisco has an announced 77% diversion rate, of the remaining 23%, perhaps another 5% to 8% are recyclables: either 'tough-to-recycle-or-compost', or 'optical sorting recyclable': that leaves about 15 to 18% of the 'stuff' that is just not designed for recovery at all.

EPR on ALL of the stuff is part of an answer, at least to create the economic incentive to design for recovery.