Producer responsibility

The principle of producer responsibility

The idea that the companies which make or import products should be responsible for the environmental impacts caused by those products throughout their life cycles is included in Part V of the Environment Act 1995.

Spreading the environmental cost of products has involved the creation of some very complex environmental regulation. The first to come into force in England and Wales were the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 1997 now 2005.

The importers or producers now have a legal obligation to reduce the environmental impact of use and end-of-life disposal stages in their products’ life cycles and prove to the authorities that suitable steps are being taken.

Producers, importers and other players in the chain of responsibility involved in product life cycles must now take practical steps to reduce the environmental impacts of products.

Packaging Waste Regulations

A business is involved with handling packaging in one of four ways, as:

• material manufacturer or importer;
• converter, i.e. takes a material and makes it into a packaging material;
• packer/filler; and/or
• seller.

Using the example of a 200 litre drum, the raw material manufacturer is the company which rolls the steel sheet from which the drum is made.

The converter takes the steel sheet and turns it into drums.

The packer/filler fills the drum with, for example, paint.

The seller sells the drum full of paint to the company which will use the paint and discard the drum.

The purpose of these Regulations is to ensure that the four parties who have been identified as having most responsibility in specifying the means of packaging take a proportionate responsibility for ensuring that the packaging has the smallest environmental impact throughout its life cycle.

To achieve this, the four parties share the responsibility for ensuring that a percentage (by weight) of all the packaging material they handle is recovered or recycled (see Waste hierarchy in waste minimisation).

Businesses comply with these Regulations by obtaining Packaging Recycling Notes (PRN) from reprocessors who are licensed by the Environment Agency. A business can either find the PRNs themselves or join a compliance scheme which pools its member companies’ obligations.

Those responsible for packaging waste in a business should be aware that the obligation for imported packaging materials is ‘rolled up’ and is solely the responsibility of the importer.

Even quite small businesses have an obligation under these Regulations.

The Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations 2005

These Regulations transpose the Restriction of Hazardous Substance in Electrical and Electronic Equipment (RoHS) Directive. The Directive (2002/95/EC) restricts the use of certain hazardous substances in new electrical and electronic equipment. Therefore, it affects the design of electrical and electronic equipment.

It applies to all categories of equipment listed in the WEEE Directive except medical devices, monitoring and control instruments, or spare parts sold before 2006. There are also other specific exemptions for certain equipment from RoHS.

The Regulations require that from 1 July 2006 new EEE must contain only specified levels of:

• lead
• mercury
• cadmium
• hexavalent chromium
• polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs)
• polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PDBEs)

Proposed levels are 0.01% by weight for cadmium, 0.1% for all other substances ‘per weight of homogeneous material’.

Companies are required to survey their sub component suppliers and ask for a guarantee of compliance with RoHS. There are no mandatory requirements for companies to carry out scientific analysis of their materials under the regulations. You must, therefore, make a decision about whether this is necessary or whether you’re confident that the components are already compliant.

The European Commission continues to consult on specific exemptions to the RoHS Directive.

The Regulator is the National Weights and Measures Laboratory.

End of life vehicles

In time, this will lead to a levy on the price of new vehicles which will pay for the environmentally-friendly recycling of old vehicles.

Visit the Environment Agency website.