Extended Producer Responsibility : An examination of its impact on innovation and greening products

The term 'Corporate Social Responsibility' (CSR) is very much in vogue with companies communicating their values and achievements in annual CSR, Corporate Citizenship and Sustainability reports. Organisations and consultancies have been created to rate companies on their corporate responsibility and to advise them on business ethics and the environment, while others, like the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI),develop and disseminate 'Sustainability Reporting Guidelines' for voluntary use by organisations reporting on the economic, environmental, and the social dimensions of their activities, products and services. Images of electronic waste in the form of discarded computers and other 'electro-scrap' dumped in Asia, other social and labour issues as well as pressure from civil society, prompted the electronics sector to develop an Electronics Industry Code of Conduct. However, despite this Code, the hi-tech sector continues to produce ever shorter-life, often superfluous products with inherently hazardous materials. Why are hi-tech corporations, which profess to be responsible corporate citizens allowing this to happen? One answer is that CSR initiatives, whether they involve Codes of Conduct or reporting guidelines, are voluntary. At best, CSR can be a way for the best companies to lead the way. At worst, CSR initiatives can even be a diversionary tactic, used by industry to pretend that they are taking action and to avoid regulation. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), the subject of this report, is thus a necessary step, if the industry is to become a more responsible corporate citizen. EPR, as a principle of product policy, was first introduced into law in the early 1990s to address the lifecycle issues of products – especially what happens to them at the end of their life – using a target-oriented approach, instead of traditional command-and-control type regulation. By extending the responsibility of producers beyond the factory gates and creating economic incentives to achieve set targets for collection, re-use and recycling, manufacturers should become more aware of the issues related to the end-of-life management of their products. Rational manufacturers would presumably try to find a way to minimise the costs associated with end-of-life management by changing the design of their products, to reduce those costs. Greenpeace International, Friends of the Earth Europe and the European Environmental Bureau commissioned this report to examine how far EPR laws in Europe, Japan and elsewhere are delivering improvements in products' environmental performance. This report provides evidence based on existing EPR programmes and anticipated EPR legislation, that EPR laws – …