Getting the Goods: 2005

EPR in the US & Canada

Bill Sheehan & Helen Spiegelman,
Product Policy Institute, USA

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For most of the 20th century the U.S. and Canada shared a common history in waste management, but the two countries' paths diverged in the last decade.   Our northern neighbors began experimenting with extended producer responsibility (EPR), turning to producers for waste management solutions.   EPR is a policy principle to promote total lifecycle environmental improvement of product systems by extending the responsibilities of the product manufacturer to various parts of the entire product's lifecycle, and especially to take-back, recycling and final disposal of the product.   Meanwhile, the U.S. continued focusing on recycling as a public service – a situation that, of course, suits the producers of throwaway products just fine.

A new report released by the Product Policy Project provides an overview of the history and status of EPR in these two countries.   Pressure from a newly re-energized U.S. environmental community has begun to break the industry resistance that has stalled the development of EPR in the U.S., and two legislative victories at opposite corners of the country – Hawaii's 2002 bottle bill and Maine's 2004 e-waste bill – may be signs of bigger changes to come in this country.

Waste wasn't always a municipal responsibility.   Back in the 19th century, when cities and towns first established public programs for the collection and disposal of refuse, municipal waste consisted mainly of coal ashes and kitchen scraps.   Less than 10 percent of our household waste was made up of worn-out products and discarded packaging.

Today's waste managers face a radically different waste stream.   The coal ashes are gone and organics are up a bit, mainly due to the addition of suburban yard trimmings.   But products and packaging now represent 75 to 87 % of the waste stream, depending on whether you measure them by weight or volume.   While the waste stream has changed radically, municipal infrastructure for managing it changed little except in scale.  

During the 1980s, environmentalists in the U.S. and Canada convinced cities to start operating recycling programs, and by the late 1980s and early 1990s, municipal recycling was expanding rapidly across the U.S. and Canada.   But the growth of recycling was matched by increased consumption, offsetting gains in municipal waste reduction.   And by the mid-1990s, the recycling rate leveled off, a trend that continues to the present.   Today, 70 percent of the product waste generated in both Canada and the U.S. still ends up in landfills and incinerators.

Starting in the late 1980s, Canadian provinces began experimenting with a producer responsibility approach to managing product waste.   Starting with disposable packaging, then expanding successful deposit programs for beverage containers, provinces began looking to brand owners for solutions.   Canada also pioneered new EPR initiatives to address toxic products.   Today, all ten Canadian provinces have EPR programs up and running for various products including tires, batteries, lubricating oil, oil filters and consumer electronics.   Duncan Bury, Head of Product Policy at Environment Canada's (Gatineau, Quebec) National Office of Pollution Prevention, summed up Canada's situation, “There really isn't any question whether this is an appropriate kind of policy.   We're now at the point of discussing how to make it more effective.”

In the U.S., by contrast, industry mobilized successfully against bottle bills and confined deposit programs to 10 of the nation's 50 states.   When waste made headlines in the late 1980s, the policy response was to step up pressure on local governments:   42 states and the District of Columbia established recycling goals that municipalities – not producers – were required to meet.   In the early 1990s, consumer product industries were hardened from fighting EPR in Europe, while environmental organizations across the country were not united around manufacturer responsibility as a priority.

Several industry groups, such as the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation and the Thermostat Recycling Corporation initiated voluntary EPR programs to pre-empt government mandates.   But these industry-designed programs lack recovery targets, public transparency or accountability.   Florida, one of the few states tracking environmental release of cadmium, for example, calculates that the recovery rate of nickel-cadmium rechargeable batteries in 2003 was 14 percent, essentially unchanged from 1995 when RBRC was established as a voluntary alternative to state regulation, and touting the goal of 70 percent recovery by 2001.   More recent efforts by U.S. government agencies and its allies have tried to negotiate voluntary producer responsibility for carpets and computer waste.   The carpet recovery program has targets and transparency, but lacks consequences for not meeting targets, while the electronics negotiations, after four years have failed to produce agreement.  

In the late 1990s, the U.S. environmental movement began running consumer campaigns to promote producer responsibility.   Local groups networked across the country and began establishing links with environmental groups outside the country.   Campaigns targeting Coca-Cola, Dell Computer, hospital vendors and other consumer sectors have made gains and have convinced many legislators of the value of the producer responsibility approach.

After five years of mounting pressure on the beverage industry, Hawaii became the 11th U.S. state (the first since 1986) to adopt a beverage container deposit program.   Maine enacted a law that bans televisions and computer monitors from disposal and requires producers to take possession of products collected by municipalities.   This was the first U.S. take-back law for electronics to assign significant responsibility to producers.   And many states are considering or adopting tough legislation restricting the use of mercury in products ranging from thermometers to mercury-added novelty toys.  

Politically, EPR is a synthesis of approaches from the left and right wing.   From a fiscal conservative perspective, EPR makes sense because it gets waste management off the tax base and it is based on the notion that market competition is more efficient and effective than government-managed programs.   Those of a more liberal bent support EPR because they believe that producers should have responsibility for pollution prevention.

If public interest organizations can come to accept industry's hopeful view that green profits, rather than bureaucratic planning, will solve our environmental problems, can the business community be convinced that regulation is necessary to engage the market in this problem-solving activity?   Achieving this will require skilled policy steering.