You will hear more about this in a lecture on management & decision-making, so this is only a short teaser. Basically, it is a concept to finance all the cost involved with waste management (from collecting, treating, monitoring and managing it as well as maintaining and operating facilities). The financing can be taken care of by the government which are dependent on tax moneys or special waste fees from the public. However, waste management often only pays-off in the long-run, when resources are not destroyed by improper managment and resources are recovered. The cost of waste managemnt is thus not high for the return but in the present is can be a large investion which the public alone may not be able to finance.
Therefore, extended producer responsibility (EPR) was invented, which puts part of the cost to the producers of products and packaging. Hence, everyone who wants to sell a product or it’s very short-lived packaging has to pay a fee. This also works as an incentive system to avoid short-lived packaging and start using easy to recycle materials.

For EPR to work, it has to be controlled/monitored by someone and someone has to collect this money to give it to the waste collectors and treating facilities. For this environmental law is essential.
Note: In law “someone” or rather “legal person” must not be a single person but can all so be an entity of several people forming an institution or a company.

To sum it up: Waste mangement is not just the invention and application of technique but also (or rather much more) the managment of materials along it’s life cycle; including financing, governing, logistic planning, communication and laws. - Look at the slides below

Please find an overview of the topics covered here:

Before you jump into the topic, why don't you find out if you remember the waste hierachie.

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/.

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