Who should pay for plastic waste?

In the extended producer responsibility system, the responsibility of the producer is constantly enriched, and at first only the responsibility for environmental damage - the producer tries to use renewable materials in production, and try to use materials that are less harmful to the environme.

The manufacturer is then responsible for the cost of recycling and disposal of the produ.

On May 15, 2019, local time, in Nairobi, Kenya, in the Ati River Industrial Zone near Nairobi, workers display plastic pellets after recycling and processi.

What is the baton?

The EU's Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive has been a key driver of the steady increase in packaging recycling rates since its publication in 199 The directive has two goals: the first is source prevention, to prevent packaging waste from being generated in the first place; if packaging must be available, packaging waste must be recycled through reuse, regeneration,e.

In 2012, 66% of old packaging in the EU was recycled, but the recycling rate of plastic packaging was 37%, which was much lower than the 83% of paper and cardboard packagi.

On the other hand, about 1/3 of the waste is single-use plastic, and the main source of single-use plastic is packagi.

This is an ambitious go.

To achieve this goal, a baton is needed as a policy tool, and this baton is the Extended Producer Responsibility (EP.

After the EPR system was established, almost all member states assigned the responsibility for recycling targets to manufacturers, and each manufacturer set targets for their own used packagi.

The EPR system was not born out of nowhere, but developed from different stag.

The responsibilities of EPR are also constantly enrich.

In the development process of this concept, EPR has condensed two connotations, the first is the concept of the whole life cycle of products; the other is the innovation of public waste management syst.

After the target is determined, who will serve these producers and how will they be charged?

In some countries such as Spain, the Czech Republic, producers' fees are paid directly to private or public waste management companies that collect and sort post-consumer packaging was.

Fees are charged based on the weight of packaging that manufacturers put on the market, and the lighter the fee, the lower the fee, which motivates the producer to incentivize material optimizati.

Often, the revenue from the sale of recycled products can offset the fees paid by producers and importers for the EPR scheme, and the business model of the EPR system is now beginning to shift to a profit mod.

        Waste management has attracted more and more attention from investors and business circl.

        The EU wants plastic recycling capacity to be significantly expanded and continuously moderniz.

By 2030, sorting and regeneration capacity will quadruple compared to 2015, creating 200,000 new jobs across Euro.

        There are other auxiliary systems at the national lev.

One is cost-increasing, such as charging consumers and producers for garbage, landfill fees (taxes), deposit return systems,e.

At present, landfill fees (taxes) and garbage charges are widely and successfully used; one is to give economic incentives, mainly providing preferential loans and subsidi.

        In this process, industry organizations also played a role as bridges, and they accelerated the transmission of information by taking advantage of the information advantages of industry organizatio.

On June 8, 2019, local time, in Bangkok, Thailand, people swim in a swimming pool filled with plastic bottles to commemorate World Oceans Day and be aware of plastic polluti.

(Visual China/Picture)

        In addition to the army of scavengers, producers and consumers cannot be missing

        At present, China has not issued regulations similar to EU WFD and PPWD, but has also issued many schemes and pla.

In 2016, the State Council issued the Implementation Plan for the Extended Producer Responsibility System, which took the lead in determining the implementation of the extended producer responsibility system for four categories of products, including electrical appliances, automobiles, lead-acid batteries and packagi.

Goal By 2020, the policy system related to the extended producer responsibility system has been initially formed, the product ecological design has made significant progress, and the standardized recovery and recycling rate of key varieties of waste products will reach an average of 4
In 2017, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Science and Technology also issued relevant documen.

The State Council's "Implementation Plan for Prohibiting the Import of Foreign Waste and Promoting the Reform of the Solid Waste Import Management System" proposed to establish and improve the extended producer responsibility syst.

In 2019, the State Council issued a pilot work plan for the construction of a "no-waste city", proposing to restrict the production, sales and use of disposable non-degradable plastic bags and plastic tableware, and to expand the application scope of degradable plastic produc.

While targets are set, the EPR does not yet have a supporting poli.

In China, the entire plastic recycling system is still a unique model of scavengers + municipal treatment + terminal recycling indust.

This unique system is formed spontaneously, mainly small and medium-sized enterprises, and also provides a large number of jobs, forming the world's largest plastic recycling indust.

But in this model, producers and consumers in the entire chain are missi.

Manufacturers, including brand owners, have always been outside the recycling system, failing to fulfill their responsibilities for source prevention, information disclosure and recycli.

The sellers have also failed to take responsibility for recycling and publici.

Although consumers in some cities have fulfilled their responsibilities for garbage classification, there is still a long way to go to persi.

If EPR is to play a role in China, the relevant competent departments of the central government should formulate various special legal recycling regulations, improve the compulsory recycling directory, and promote the implementation of different systems such as deposit system, fund system and prepaid system in different industri.

At the same time, each city should have different policies for garbage disposal
The EU's directives only give goals, and countries will formulate different laws and regulations according to their own circumstances to clarify the recycling ra.

For example, at the regional level, carry out the construction of regional resource recycling cente.

At present, the main amount of plastic waste in China is concentrated in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions and megaciti.

In these regions, data collection and analysis of the amount of waste generated and material flow should be carried out to understand the flow of various waste resources and build corresponding constructi.

backend processing infrastructu.

On this basis, the responsibilities and obligations of each producer can be clarifi.

In terms of funds, the fees that each responsible subject needs to pay should have special manageme.

Foundations that manage funds should also do a good job in information disclosu.

Packaging represents not a product, but a management syst.

Even if the responsible subjects of each link perform their respective obligations, recycling channels still need to be established, which requires retailers and e-commerce to play their ro.

Industry associations should also carry out more investment in technology, establish supply chains for upstream and downstream enterprises, and build small closed loops in plastic categories, and build a large system on this bas.