EPR

Definition

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is an approach to environmental policy whereby the producer of a product must take financial or physical responsibility for the post-consumer stage of a product’s lifecycle. This is achieved by extending the traditional stages of production, delivery and sales to include collection, sorting and recycling or disposal.

Principles

EPR schemes adopt a ‘producer pays’ principle to encourage environmental responsibility by either economic disincentives (such as landfill tax or incineration fees) or by shifting industry attitudes to encourage private investment into recycling technologies. 

To date, EPR has generally been applied to products commonly disposed of in public or household waste that is managed and paid for by local governments. These bodies frequently have a legal obligation to collect, maintain and dispose of consumer waste regardless of what it is or how much of it there is. This is a significant burden on the public purse and UK taxpayers cover around 90% of the costs of disposing packaging waste created by private businesses.¹

With most post-consumer waste materials, the cost of collecting, sorting and recycling can often be greater than revenue made from the sale of the resulting recycled materials.² EPR law has been proven to generate the funding required to address this imbalance, or ‘full net cost’ by moving the burden from taxpayers and local government to brands and retailers while simultaneously incentivising manufacturers to reappraise their use of polluting materials through reduction or elimination.³