Lecture 3 - Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)

As you already learned in the general lecture on Economics and Finances in context of Waste Managment and Circular Economy, Extended Producer Responsibility (in the following EPR) is a comparatively modern approach on how waste managment can be financed.

From an economic perspective, waste management operators are offering the service of “removing and treating the waste in an environmentally-friendly way”. For the owner of the waste (the household, businesses/companies/shops and the industry) the short term value bringing them utility is that the waste is removed. Only on the long term can they appreciate the effect of “treating the waste in an environmentally-friendly way”.

As we know from the Infinite Prisioner Dilemma, humans tend to see greater value in short-term effects than long-term. Especially if they do not understand the full consequences of disposing their waste in the environment. Thus they might not be willing to pay a high price for the waste collection and treatment. Education is a possible way on how this can be improved on.
It could also be that the collected fee is also allocated to other services beside from waste management (such as energy supply), which leads to not enough money being put into waste management by the decision makers.

Coupled with the issue above however is also the Tragedy of the Commons introduced by Garret Hardin, where the environment can be understood as a common good. “What use might it have if I pay for my waste disposal if others dispose their waste into the environment without paying anything” - might be a thought that could come in mind following the free-rider concept. Hardin’s only solution to this Dilemma is that the government passes laws forbidding such actions and also is taking care of the monitoring and sanctioning. As a rule existing, does not always mean that it is also complied to.

However, following the concept of Plato’s “Republic” the government is obliged to ensure that it’s citizens are provided with the essentials resources as they are concentrating their time to offer the society a product they themselves are specialised in (e. g. baking delicious bread) but need a variety of products in ordre to survive. In Germany the responsibility of the state to provide all life necessities is called “Daseinsvorsoge”.

Without functioning waste managment hygienic issues in form of air and water pollution as well as disease carriers like rodents and mosquitoes arise. And therefore, a basic human need (health) is endangered if the government cannot ensure a clean environment. Following this string of thouhgts, the government has an obligation to provide waste managment service.

For the provision of this service, the government is allowed to collect fees and/or taxes which were already introduced in the general lecture.

If the collected fees and taxes would be able to cover the costs incurred by waste managment no further discussion would be needed. However, for citizens with a low-income it is already hard to cover the costs for other life necessities such as food; they would not be able to pay the waste fees and might be tempted to dispose of the waste otherwise in order to save the costs as the provison of food and other goods is more valuable to them. Of course this mind-set can also be followed by people with income sufficient to cover their basic needs. However, here the price for waste management is comparitavly low in relation to the overall income and thus the value gained less; which in-turn decreases the incentive to do so.

In order to overcome this lack of funding for waste managment, new ideas were developed to cover the cost. One of these is that producers of goods are also responsible as they are creating profit for themselves without taking into account the full cost their business has incurred by indirectly destroying the environment. This concept is called “extended producer responsibility”. A producer of for example packaging, batteries or electronical devices has to take responsibility and ensure that what they introduced onto the market is also brouhgt back into the system instead of polluting the environment through improper disposal.

Let’s also keep in mind: A more varied selection of tools other than simply enforcing behaviour onto the citizens gives the government a better scope as to how they want to govern. Instead of simply enforcing measurements, they can also give incentives to the citizens, which will lead to a higher level of acceptance and stronger democracy than passing sanction could.

It is important to note here that due to their different history and cultural development, societies have agreed on different values and definitons which both affect their legal framework. Hence what holds true in the German understanding, does not necessairly be true for a different country. However, the way the natural sciences works is universal (just maybe our model of it, might be subjected to flaws) and hence solutions to protect and live in the environment are essential in every country. When implementing the measures for these it is important to interact with the different stakeholders and specialist in law, politics and policy making in order to take into account the individual circumstances in the respective country.

One of the first course of actions of the PREVENT Waste Alliance was to create an EPR Toolbox. Togethter with experts and stakeholders from the industry which are part of the PREVENT Waste Alliance, they created a Toolbox with several modules, factsheets and a video series explaining EPR step by step.

EPR is practiced in real life and there is no better teacher than the ones who practice what they preach every day. During the lecture series of the German-MENA university network, the students had the honor to learn from two experts from companies aktiv in the organization of EPR: Landbell and Expra.

EPR Lecture from Landbell

The Extended Producer Responsibility Alliance (EXPRA) was founded in 2013 and is an alliance of 26 packaging and packaging waste recovery and recycling systems from 24 countries, which works on a non-profit basis.

Being activ in 24 countries they have a good understanding how different nations require different legal systems for EPR. Below are slides provided by Joachim Quoden from EXPRA, who helt a guest lecture in the German-MENA university network in the winter term 2021/22.

In the first part of the lecture you learn more about what service EXPRA is offering, what the motivation for an EPR is and how EPR generally function. How about writing down what you know about EPR before looking at the slides so you can add what you did not know after looking through them?

The next slide set will look at different EPR systems and how the actual recyclability impacts their work. Nothing is more frustrating then to aim for a recycling quota that is not achievalbe because the products are not recyclable. It also increases the costs, as the material collected for recycling will have to be utilised in Waste-to-Energy processes afterall; which entails missing revenues and additional transportation and disposal costs.

Does your country use EPR? If yes, how does their system look like? And if not, have there been any efforts to set up a system (research conducted, political agenda)? If none exists yet, which EPR system would you implement in your coun

try? Compare your research findings with the next few slides on the difference of European EPR-systems.

This is not an easy task for one individual company as they are limited on how far it can track its own products (especially without invading the consumers personal space). It is also not very cost-efficient as the economy-of-scale and economy-of-scope take hold and it makes sense for the companies to outsource the work required by an EPR system to a new acteur: "Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO)".

The OECD has published a guidance manual on EPR in 2001 and revised it in 2016. In Chapter 4 of this manual (pp.113) they explain how the collection, sorting and treatment as well as the EPR system itself (in a competitive setup) are most cost-efficient and hence active in different scopes geographically speaking; meaning that while the collection system is only active on a local up to national scope, while waste recovery and disposal takes place on a national or even international scale. The largest acteur in this setup is often the product market itself, which can be globally active (e. g. a large computer seller). This also is the source of an issue with keeping up with material flows as an PRO. Even though all flows should be reported to the PRO, they might not add up as some waste streams want be reported but exported illegally or disposed of wrongly (e. g. the residual waste). Another point is that it is unsure how long products are being used and thus when the material flow will come back after putting a product onto the market.

Hence there is a need for an organization that collects the data of how much of a certain material is introduced to the market, how much of it is collected and brought to a recycling plant, how high the losses were in the recycling plant due to for instance low input material and then also how much of this material was sold and used in new products. Such a company is called "Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO)".

As data from different points in the life chain is needed, in order to monitor and report on collection and recycling rates, the PRO has to interact with different actors along the life chain without sharing sensitive data with different companies involved while at the same time reporting what is necessary. It thus makes sense that the company is independent of the different actors - however it can either be public or private and for-profit or non-profit. Also the number of PRO is not pre-determined. There are systems using one single PRO as a central manager with a good overview and systems using several PRO to prevent misusage of power by a monopol.

Why don't you write down what possible constellations PROs could have and what strengths and weaknesses arise from which system, before or while looking at the next slides? The EPR toolbox and the Lecture of Dr Thomas Fischer form Landbell mentioned above might be helpful with this.

It is sometimes easy to forget that what we know is something we have learned and thus not all people will naturally know. While sorting your waste according to the material is not hard in theory, the public might struggle with doing so if you do not communicate to them how to do it and why they should do so. If you know the reason for something, it is much easier to get motivated. Even in Gemarny, where people are taught which waste to dispose in which bin, citizens throw their waste into the wrong container at times. This is partically becaues they do not understand the consequences as they have no idea how the waste is treated, what the requirements for good recycling is and how all this is connected to the financing scheme. So coming up with communication campaigns and a colour coded waste system, which has symbolic value, is necessairy in order to interact with the public, who are a crucial acteur in the life cycle of the product/household waste.

Let's explore EPR solutions from diffrent countries by visiting their website. Try to find out how the different actors work together in each system and which waste streams they are seperating or working with:

Let’s explore EPR solutions from diffrent countries by visiting their website. Try to find out how the different actors work together in each system and which waste streams they are seperating or working with:

• Fost Plus in Belgium

• EKO-KOM in Czech Republic

• Ecoembes in Spain
  Did you find the Circulab Lab of Ecoembes?
  Packaging can also be made of glass, so let’s take a look at the Spanish Ecovidrio.

• Had fun reseraching? More EXPRA members can be found here.
  You can also look at the summary in the EXPRA brochure

Take a few minutes to look at your notes and try to summarize what you learned. Afterwards look at the recap of Joachim Quoden from EXPRA. What did your notes miss and what would you personally add to the slides?

This project “German MENA University Network for Waste Management and Circular Economy”, implemented by the University Rostock (UR), Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) and University of Technology Dresden (TUD), Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST), Constantine university 3 Algeria, Ain Shams University Egypt and Cadi Ayyad University Morocco is funded by the PREVENT Waste Alliance, an initiative of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The contents of the Wastepedia course are the sole responsibility of German-MENA University Network and do not necessarily reflect the positions of all PREVENT Waste Alliance members or official policy positions of the governments involved. More information: https://prevent-waste.net/en/.

We, the one responsible for the content of the Wastepedia Lecture, tried to uphold the copyright law. If you find a case of copyright infringement, please contact the HOOU support so unrightfully used content can be taken down. As we had no intention of using material of a third party without permission, please hold of from any legal action to give us time to correct possible mistakes made.