Extended producer responsibility

About: Extended producer responsibility is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1120 publications have been published within this topic receiving 26805 citations. The topic is also known as: EPR.

Achievment of sustainable solid waste management in developing countries

Abstract: With an increasingly population and urbanization, the solid waste management have become a major challenge for local authorities in developing countries all over the world. The local authorities must improve their waste management in order to minimize the negative effects of solid waste and to avoid future land use conflicts. At the same time the economical resources are limited and solid waste management puts already today a significant pressure on the local economies. There is a need for a sustainable waste management which offer solutions to issues of social-, economical- and environmental aspects. This study aims to identify concepts for improving waste management in developing countries and evaluate them from a sustainability perspective. The report consists of a literature review and a case study. The literature review identifies different concepts and investigates the differences between developing countries to determine if it is possible to adopt the same concepts everywhere. Four different concepts for improving the waste management were identified; Integrated Solid Waste Management, Integration of the informal sector, Private Public Partnerships and Decentralization. The term of a developing country were found to lack a standard definition. In fact the differences between countries often referred to as developing were found to be significant in many aspects, even in waste characteristics. The conclusion is that waste management is a decentralized activity which needs decentralized solutions of how to achieve sustainable waste management. The case study uses the Kavango region in Namibia as an example for the possibilities of utilizing the different concepts. The first step in the case study was to find out about the current waste management. A mixed method of qualitative and quantitative research methods were used to map the current waste management. Examples of methods used are open ended interviews with key stakeholders and waste characterization studies. Two of the results were that only 0.11 kilogram solid waste is generated per person and day in the household and that the household waste consist of relatively low amounts of organic waste (26 %) and relatively high amounts of recyclable waste (> 50 %). The second step of the case study was to evaluate the current solid waste management from a sustainability perspective. Criteria for a sustainable waste management found in literature were used for a sustainability assessment of the current were management in the Kavango region. Out of eight criteria only two were fulfilled and due to poor efficiency, inability to cover it own costs and severe environmental impacts the conclusion is that the current waste management is unsustainable. The last step of the case study was to investigate the possibilities and effects of introducing different concepts for improving the waste management in the Kavango region. Several aspects of the concepts were already found in the current solid waste management, however possibilities exists to adopt the concepts in a much more comprehensive way. The conclusion is that the use of one concept does not rule out other concepts. In fact the concepts focus on different aspects of solid waste management and complement each other.

Environmental costs and environmental benefits analysis of packaging waste recovery and recycling targets

Abstract: Society is faced with the growing problem of waste associated with mass consumption. The treatment and final disposal of waste is linked to a wide range of environmental problems, including loss and wastage of resources, atmospheric, aquatic and land pollution, as well as public health concerns. For these reasons, since the early 1990s there has been an emphasis on waste minimisation and recycling initiatives. The European Commission decided that packaging waste would be its first target in an aim to reduce waste in general - to be followed by several other producer responsibility type legislations. The landfill Directive came into force in 2002 - It reduces the amount of bio-degradable waste that can be landfilled and bans hazardous waste from most landfill sites. The End of Life Vehicle Directive came into force in 2003 and put the responsibility on the producer to organize recovery and recycling of vehicles. The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) came into force in 2004 and requires manufacturers of such products to finance their recovery and recycling. This study looks at the UK Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 1997 and the targets that have been chosen to enable the UK to fulfil the requirements of the European Directive (94/62/EC) on Packaging and Packaging Waste. The aim of the research focuses on establishing target levels with maximum environmental benefits, specifically for recovering and recycling cardboard packaging waste in the UK. The methodology used is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which considers the whole life cycle of cardboard packaging, including the manufacture of packaging from raw (or recycled) fibres, its transport and use and waste management options. A range of scenarios have been modelled to reflect present day achievements, the levels of recycling expected of Member States through the revised Directive targets, as well as extreme scenarios. The scenarios are: Base scenario: 53% recycling, 4.23% incineration and 42.77% landfill Scenario 2: 60% recycling with 37.2% landfill and 2.8% incineration Scenario 3: 70% recycling with 27.9% landfill and 2.1 % incineration Scenario 4: 80% recycling with 18.6% landfill and 1.4% incineration Scenario 5: 35% recycling with 60.45% landfill and 4.55% incineration Scenario 6: 100% landfill Scenario 8: 100% incineration. It was found that significant reductions in global warming and carcinogens are associated with increasing levels of recycling (the highest level assessed was 80% recycling), but this comes at a cost of a slight increase in energy usage impacts. Global warming impacts fall by 20% with an increase in recycling from 53% to 80%. However, some of these potential benefits are compromised if waste cardboard needs to be exported to Europe for recycling. This particular project is looking at waste related policy issues. However it needs to be acknowledged that the manufacturing of cardboard packaging accounts for a significant proportion of the total burdens associated with the cardboard-packaging life cycle. These burdens are not affected by waste management policies; instead they would require improvements in the manufacturing processes to be made.

Economic instruments in the waste management sector : experiences from OECD and Latin American countries

Abstract: Contiene: 1. Introduction -- 2. Methodology -- 3. Municipal waste charges -- 4. Landfill taxes -- 5. Landfill allowances trading scheme -- 6. Economic instruments supporting extended producer responsibility (PER) policies -- 7. Summary and recommendations