Extended producer responsibility (EPR) reflects the idea that producers who put products on the market should assume responsibility for their products beyond the commercialisation stage and in particular for their end-of-life treatment.
The application of EPR very often involves a requirement for the producers to establish systems for the collection (and recycling) of their waste with a view to achieving certain targets (i.e. a “take-back mandate”).
For reasons of practicality, they usually join a producer responsibility organisation (PRO) in order to comply with this requirement. A PRO is a collective body operating nationally which takes charge of meeting the legislative requirements of producers on their behalf and against a financial contribution on their part. As a result, once a producer has joined a PRO (typically through the payment of a fee corresponding to the type/quantity and characteristics of the products they put on the market), the PRO becomes the entity which is legally responsible and thus needs to ensure that the legislative targets and requirements are fulfilled.
It is best practice for producer responsibility organisations (PROs) to enhance the performance of their extended producer responsibility (EPR) scheme by setting up incentives (going beyond legal requirements) that drive increased separate collection, reuse and recycling rates for the waste collected under the EPR. Actions that PROs can implement include:
- motivating citizens to source separate waste more and better through innovative communication actions, such as competitions among territories;
- close cooperation (financial, technical and/or logistic) with public authorities at regional/local level;
- cooperation with social economy actors for the collection and reuse of products;
- incentivising producers to design more sustainable products (e.g. via “fee modulation”);
- benchmarking environmental achievements of different areas covered by the EPR scheme, e.g. at the level of the territories of public authorities at a regional/local level.