EPR schemes should be designed in such a method that they don’t disrupt present environment friendly markets, in any other case they’ll do extra hurt than good to the recycling business, based on a brand new place paper on prolonged producer duty (EPR) printed 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 of an absolute necessity, recyclers should be concerned within the governance our bodies of such schemes to make sure an applicable 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 present 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 fabric stream have been assessed.”
The group stated that policymakers ought to first take into account different coverage devices to extend circularity, akin to making design for recycling obligatory and setting legally-binding recycled content material targets. These measures might help to extend demand for recycled supplies and degree the taking part in area with extracted uncooked supplies.
“Preserving free and truthful competitors for the recycling business is significant as a result of recycled supplies are topic to market complexities, akin to provide and demand, and EPR schemes might disrupt environment friendly markets if not designed appropriately,” 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 Normal Arnaud Brunet. “We consider {that a} well-designed EPR scheme, when mandatory and mixed with different coverage devices, can play a task in reaching a extra round economic system.”
