Verónica Martínez Sánchez (ENT) and Victoria Ferrer Maymó (Gremi de Recuperació de Catalunya)
Circular Economy cannot be limited to the management of already generated waste. In fact, having to manage existing waste should be the last option. Applying criteria for circularity at the design stage is crucial to achieve a more circular economy. Once waste is generated, it can no longer be modified, only managed as well as possible. Thus, products not designed to be recycled will continue ending up in landfills. The responsibility to make products more circular belongs to the producers and cannot be transferred to the recyclers, since they are not the ones who initially put such products on the market.
The concept of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) has been part of the European Union’s waste policy for years (Compagnoni, 2022). The EPR extends the producers’ responsibilities to the end-of-life stage of their product. Producers can meet their EPR obligations individually or collectively through Producer Responsibility Organizations (PRO).
Currently, many products placed on the market do not have EPR obligations. Thus, producers put all kinds of products on the market, regardless of how difficult and/or expensive their waste management are, without assuming any operational or financial responsibility. Some of these post-consumer materials have a significant weight in the waste generation, in terms of mass (e.g., textiles, non-packaging paper, furniture). Others have complex and expensive waste management processes, such as diapers, cigarette butts, pads, wipes, chewing gum and mattresses (Puig-Ventosa, 2017).
According to the OECD, the creation of EPR have coincided with increases in recycling rates and financial support for waste management services; however, there is little evidence that existing EPRs have influenced product design (OECD, 2021).
The design of the financial contributions of producers to comply with EPR obligations collectively is key to influencing eco-design (OECD, 2021). Most PROs have designed these contributions simply to cover the costs incurred by the PRO. As an example, to date, Ecoembes (SCRAP for packaging in Spain) has only considered the weight and the main material used in the packaging to define the producers’ fees. For example, a beverage carton that has low recyclability (European Commission, 2022; Fern et al., 2023) has paid lower fees (per kg of material) than other containers with better recyclability (e.g. PET) for several years in Spain.
The Spanish Law 7/2022, of April 8, on waste and contaminated soils for a circular economy establishes, in Article 43.1 (b), that the financial contribution of producers must “In cases of collective compliance with obligations, and to the extent possible, be modulated for each product or group of similar products, especially taking into account their durability, that they can be repaired, reused and recycled, and the presence of hazardous substances, adopting a life cycle approach life and in accordance with the requirements established by the Law of the European Union and on the basis, when available, of harmonized criteria to guarantee a correct functioning of the internal market.”
With this law, all PROs must “eco-modulate” their producers’ fee. Among the products with EPR in Spain, there is packaging, and the modulation obligation is also included in Article 23.3 of Spanish Royal Decree 1055/2022, of December 27, on containers and container waste: “In cases of collective compliance with the obligations of the producer, the contribution must be modulated for each type of similar packaging, taking into account the nature and quantity of material used in its manufacture, its durability, whether it can be repaired, reused and recycled, its superfluity, the quantity of materials recycled materials they contain, the presence of hazardous substances or other factors that affect the ease of reuse, the recycling of packaging waste or the incorporation of recycled materials, among others. For this, an approach based on the life cycle must also be adopted and in accordance with the requirements established by the applicable Law of the European Union and on the basis, when available, of harmonized criteria to guarantee the proper functioning of the internal market.”
The same article establishes that: “Modulation is made up of a bonus granted by the collective system to the producer when it meets the efficiency criteria, or a penalty to be paid by the producer to the PRO when the product fails to meet said criteria. The bonuses and penalties must be established by the collective systems, in a transparent and non-discriminatory manner, guaranteeing the participation of all interested parties. The modulation may consider the criteria included in annex VIII or other similar ones that are applicable to the containers belonging to said collective systems and that achieve similar results.” Annex VII establishes that the modulation levels must be high enough to provide an incentive and have a significant effect on the producers’ eco-design decisions.
The modulation established for domestic containers will also be mandatory for commercial and industrial containers no later than a period of two years from the authorization of the PROs (Fifth Transitory Provision).
With the new Royal Decree (RD) for packaging, the packaging PROs continue to have the power to define the producers’ financial contribution, but this must be done in a transparent and non-discriminatory manner, guaranteeing the participation of all parties. The lack of clearly set and standardized legal criteria can be problematic. Without such criteria, each PRO can establish its own rates under different criteria.
In addition, the law and the RD could be more ambitious to boost a fairer modulation while reducing the environmental impact of packaging. To foster eco-design, the fee modulation should:
- Completely cover the real cost of the end-of-life of each product, including the costs of incineration and landfill of waste not collected selectively (including their taxes). The fee paid by each producer should reflect as closely as possible the true cost of the end-of-life of their own products (European Commission, 2014; Zero Waste Europe, 2015; Pouikli, 2020).
- Be co-designed among key players throughout the life cycle of the products in question, at least with Public Administrations and recyclers, who are well aware of the limitations of the current collection and recycling systems.
- Be based on the “Polluter-Pay-Principle” and distribute costs among the producers according to each product’s circularity. Without a fair cost distribution, the most sustainable producers suffer doubly as they do not receive rewards for doing well and must partially contribute to covering the costs of the less sustainable producers. To estimate the true circularity, independent studies are needed: 1) on the actual reuse and recyclability of each product in the area where such products are placed on the market and 2) such studies must consider the entire life cycle of the products to make fair comparisons between packaging options that meet the same functional unit (same service). Such modulation should not only consider the environmental impact of the end-of-life stage of packaging, but also previous life-cycle stages (e.g., raw material extraction phase). This way, packages with the lowest impacts throughout their entire life cycle will be the ones with the lowest fees.
- Reward or require packaging standardization. It is crucial not only for reusable packaging, but also for recyclable ones. With standardization, logistics and collaboration of the actors in the value chain are facilitated, making it more accessible and facilitating the creation of economies of scale. (Zero Waste Europe, 2023).
For this modulation to have a greater impact, the consumer must know the fee paid by each container to the PRO. Once the fee modulation is fair, designed with transparent criteria and circularity in mind, the value of such fees can guide consumer towards more sustainable purchases.
Summarizing, all products placed on the market must have an associated EPR scheme, such schemes must include fee modulation, with regulated criteria, designed to encourage the reduction of environmental impact throughout the entire life cycle of products. Finally, consumers must be aware of the fee paid by each product to incentivize more responsible consumption.
REFERENCES
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European Commission (2014) ‘Development of Guidance on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) FINAL REPORT’. Available at: http://epr.eu-smr.eu/documents/BIO by Deloitte – Guidance on EPR – Final Report.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1%5Cn http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/pdf/target_review/Guidance on EPR – Final Report.pdf.
European Commission (2022) ‘COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT IMPACT ASSESSMENT REPORT Accompanying the document Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and Council on packaging and packaging waste, amending Regulation (’, 36237(October 2011), pp. 1–5. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/health/ehealth/overview_el.
Fern et al. (2023) ‘NGO perspectives on the urgent need to reduce paper packaging EU rules on packaging ’:, (April), pp. 1–5.
OECD (2021) ‘Modulated fees for extended producer responsibility schemes (EPR)’, Env/Epoc/Wprpw(2020)2/Final, (184). Available at: https://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/publicdisplaydocumentpdf/?cote=ENV/EPOC/WPRPW(2020)2/FINAL&docLanguage=En%0Ahttps://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/2a42f54b-en.pdf?expires=1653561486&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=231388352CA50F38423E2B5CCA9E4B27.
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Puig-Ventosa, I. (2017) Towards the Generalization of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). Available at: https://ent.cat/en/cap-a-la-generalitzacio-de-la-responsabilitat-ampliada-del-productor-grap/ (Accessed: 18 April 2023).
Zero Waste Europe (2015) ‘REDESIGNING RESPONSIBILITY PRODUCER A new EPR is needed for a circular economy’, (September).
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