EPR or Extended Producer Responsibility Success

by CorpSeed Pvt Ltd Environment | Compliance | Finance

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Based on the principle that the polluter pays, the States of the Union, for twenty years now, have based their separate collection policies on the financial and organizational involvement of producers and distributors, without therefore leaving the entire burden on citizens / consumers who they pay the waste rate.

EPR: what are the objectives?

The ways of applying the extended producer responsibility schemes can vary from one Member State to another, so it is necessary to define the minimum operating requirements. For this reason, in India a transposition scheme of the directive is being prepared, following which ministerial decrees will be published with the aim of:

1. Define roles and responsibilities;

2. Define the waste management objectives, aimed at achieving at least the quantitative objectives relevant for the extended producer responsibility regime;

3. Establish the presence of a system to collect data on products placed on the market, on the collection and treatment of waste resulting from these products;

4. Establish financial contributions, ensuring fair treatment of producers in a proportionate way.

Second-hand operators: the point on requests

In order for second-hand operators to continue their activities in a profitable way and to avoid conflicts of interest within the producers themselves, the proposals brought by the UN Network to legislators and the Ministry of the Environment must be accepted. The key points are:

1. The request that producers take charge only financially and not organizationally of the management of collection, recovery and disposal of materials / goods, leaving the organizational management of the same to re-use operators (as is already the case now).

2. Define the areas of application of reverse logistics, the process by which the used goods are recovered by the manufacturer / distributor to regain from what has exhausted its first cycle of use. This mechanism must be sporadic and in agreement between distributors and second-hand manufacturers, in order not to become the reference model of the EPR (extended producer responsibility), with the consequence of delivering most of the used goods to producers and distributors in used single-product chains.

3. The proceeds of the EPR must contribute to supporting the re-use chain, with the establishment of an economic contribution to the second-hand operators, based on objective criteria (e.g. for every kg of reused material).

4. Prevent urban hygiene companies from transferring the reusable fraction of goods / waste to payment

It is therefore essential that second-hand operators have a leading role in the bodies responsible for decisions on the EPR of durable goods, possibly in a permanent institutional table such as the one proposed, a bill that was inspired by the UN network with the aim of rearranging the used sector.

If, thanks to the Table, any conflict of interest of the producers is neutralized, the contributions resulting from the extended responsibility of the producer will become a fundamental element for the sustainability and prosperity of the second-hand operators' economy.