EU Waste Law

A number of Directives provide for the extended responsibility of the producer to the end of life of its products (“Extended Producer Responsibility” or “EPR”). These Directives were originally directly inspired by the concept developed by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) . As such, EPR is defined as “an environmental policy approach in which a producer’s responsibility, physical and/or financial, for a product is extended to the post-consumer stage of a product’s life-cycle” (Chapter 1.5, p. 18). In regard to EPR, a producer is deemed liable for such a final phase, and “an implicit signal is sent to the producer to alter the design of his products so as to reduce the environmental impact in question.” In addition, EPR shifts the responsibility of waste management upstream to the producer and away from municipalities: “EPR policy should be designed to provide incentives to encourage producers who absorb social costs from the treatment of the products. Any unavoidable costs could therefore be incorporated into the product pricing. The producer and the consumer – as far as the tax payer is concerned – would pay for the social cost (externalities)” (Chapter 4.7, p. 59). The nature of an economic instrument of measures implementing EPR is specific.

As was noted above, the general status of EPR has considerably changed with the Waste Framework Directive. For such end-of-life products where EU law has not implemented EPR, unlike under prior legislation, the Directive now provides that it is for the Member States to “decide that the costs of waste management are to be borne partly or wholly by the producer of the product from which the waste came and that the distributors of such products may share these costs” (Article 14(2)). They may decide that the producer of a product “has extended producer responsibility” and take “appropriate measures to encourage the design of products in order to reduce their environmental impacts and the generation of waste in the course of the production and subsequent use of products” (Article 8(1)).

However, the implementation of EPR is indeed organised at various degrees by Directives for batteries and accumulators, packaging and packaging waste, end-of-life vehicles, waste electrical and electronic equipment, generally relying on recovery and recycling targets laid down by legislation and which constitute its ultimate goal.