EPR schemes have to be designed in such a approach that they don’t disrupt current environment friendly markets, in any other case they are going to do extra hurt than good to the recycling business, based on a brand new place paper on prolonged producer duty (EPR) revealed by the Bureau of Worldwide Recycling (BIR), a worldwide federation of recycling industries, on 20 November.
BIR pressured that, when and the place EPR schemes are thought-about an absolute necessity, recyclers have to be concerned within the governance our bodies of such schemes to make sure an acceptable stability of pursuits among the many most related stakeholders within the worth chain.
“BIR helps coverage devices to extend circularity, however it’s crucial that EPR schemes should not disrupt current environment friendly markets,” stated BIR President Susie Burrage OBE. “They need to be arrange solely when there’s a want and solely as soon as the effectiveness and the intrinsic worth of a cloth stream have been assessed.”
The group stated that policymakers ought to first contemplate different coverage devices to extend circularity, corresponding to making design for recycling necessary and setting legally-binding recycled content material targets. These measures may help to extend demand for recycled supplies and stage the enjoying discipline with extracted uncooked supplies.
“Preserving free and honest competitors for the recycling business is significant as a result of recycled supplies are topic to market complexities, corresponding to provide and demand, and EPR schemes might disrupt environment friendly markets if not designed accurately,” stated the doc.
“BIR stands prepared to have interaction with policymakers and authorities of their efforts to extend recycling charges and circularity,” stated BIR Director Common Arnaud Brunet. “We imagine {that a} well-designed EPR scheme, when crucial and mixed with different coverage devices, can play a task in reaching a extra round economic system.”
