WCRRC Releases Study on British Columbia’s EPR System for Packaging
As New York State Government considers establishing an Extender Producer Responsibility (EPR) system, a new report is released that details a lack of transparency and results from British Columbia’s EPR system.
The West Coast Refuse & Recycling Coalition (WCRRC) just released a study that examines the British Columbia (BC) extended producer responsibility (EPR) system for packaging. A number of NYS legislators are looking to export the British Columbia EPR model to NYS to increase recycling and encourage manufacturers to use more recyclable packaging. However, what appears to be a relatively simple concept is highly complex in its execution.
A new report commissioned by the WCRRC exposes numerous flaws and shortcomings with the British Columbia EPR Model. These include:
· A lack of transparency, making it nearly impossible to evaluate the program’s true cost, effectiveness, or recycling rates. BC’s EPR model has failed to achieve significant environmental milestones, according to the report.
· Examples of product redesign as a result of EPR policy are “few in number and anecdotal at best.”
· Manufacturers simply pass on the costs of EPR to their customers as a cost of doing business, the report notes. The impacts of these extra costs fall most heavily on lower income citizens.
· The BC EPR system pays incentive fees it deems “reasonable” to local governments; however, many BC communities have stated that these fees do not necessarily cover their full costs. As a result, the true costs of recycling are underestimated with local governments making up the difference where the “reasonable cost” payment does not cover the real costs.
“BC’s packaging EPR system fails to differentiate products based on recyclability and overall environmental performance,” said WCRRC in a statement. “In fact, the program actively discriminates against lightweight products that are hard to recycle but still have a lower environmental footprint than their recyclable competitors. BC’s EPR system is simply a recycle-only approach to materials management that is uninterested in achieving the lowest environmental footprint.”
Enactment of an EPR program in New York State means higher costs to consumers, lost manufacturing jobs, more government bureaucracy and most unfortunately, little resolution to the landfill capacity issue.
Weigh in with your NYS legislator at the PIA Legislative Action Center here. https://www.votervoice.net/PIA/Campaigns