CIWMB staff submits the following for consideration. DTSC’s Green Chemistry Initiative and the CIWMB’s Extended Producer Responsibility Framework should be viewed as complementing each other, particularly in the sense that both strive to move towards cradle-to-cradle management of substances and/or products. One of the suggestions in the Phase I report references EPR. CIWMB staff recommends that the Green Chemistry Phase II report include a recommendation regarding the need for legislation authorizing an EPR framework based on the framework adopted by the CIWMB in September 2007 and refined in January 2008.
The remainder of this submittal provides additional information on the CIWMB’s EPR framework.
Two underlying issues drive the need for EPR: 1) landfill disposal tonnages that have crept upward in recent years; and 2) the enormous costs local governments face to manage products with hazardous substances that are banned from landfills.
Despite historic progress in achieving the waste diversion mandates of AB 939, the core objective of the law remains unfulfilled. Today we are disposing only marginally less in absolute tons than when the law was enacted nearly 20 years ago, and there has been an upward disposal trend in recent years. Roughly two-thirds of this material is comprised of manufactured products and packaging.
Currently, local governments are almost exclusively burdened with the responsibility of managing household hazardous wastes (HHW) banned by DTSC from landfills. HHW includes a variety of common products that contain hazardous substances, including thermostats, rechargeable and single-use batteries, and electronics. A Board study in the early 2000s calculated that an additional $41 million was needed by 32 jurisdictions to manage only three HHW product categories. San Luis Obispo County estimates that its current budget of $300,000 for managing HHW would need to increase to $4 million to adequately manage HHW. These examples provide glimpses of the burden being placed on local governments, a burden that statewide could be on the order of several hundred million dollars or more per year.
This is in part the result of a patchwork of different legislative approaches that typically result in the inconsistent application of environmental and public policy criteria and in the expansion of state bureaucracy to collect fees and administer payments. To address these issues, in February 2007 the Board adopted a set of Strategic Directives that included one on Producer Responsibility. The Board directed staff to seek statutory authority to foster "cradle-to-cradle" producer responsibility and develop producer-financed and producer-managed systems for product discards.
The Board adopted the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Framework guidance document as a policy priority in September 2007 and approved refinements in January 2008. This is intended to assist in developing EPR programs in California and is modeled after programs found elsewhere, primarily in Canada and Europe.
The policy places a shared responsibility on everyone involved in the life cycle of a product (including producers/brand owners, retailers, consumers, and local governments) for reducing the health and environmental impacts that result from production, use, and end-of-life (EOL) management of a product. Yet, as defined by the Board, EPR clearly places greater responsibility on producers who design and market products, while it removes costs placed on the general public.
The framework calls for making producers financially or physically responsible for implementing programs to deal with their products; this could be through collective producer associations or third-party organizations, and it could entail contractual arrangements with retailers, haulers, and local governments. To the extent that EOL costs are folded into a product’s total costs, this could also create an economic incentive to design products that generate less waste and pollution.
The EPR Framework presents goals, guiding principles, roles and responsibilities, suggestions for governance and initial thoughts on a product selection methodology. This includes providing authority for:
• Establishing agency-wide product selection procedures and selecting product categories; • Requiring producers of selected categories to work with retailers, haulers, local jurisdictions, and other stakeholders, as appropriate, to develop and implement approved plans to address the targeted products; • Specifying what provisions must be addressed in each plan (e.g., goals, fee or cost structure options, administration, reporting), while allowing flexibility in how provisions are implemented; and; • Specifying enforcement mechanisms such as penalty procedures and provisions for non-compliance.
EPR offers the opportunity to tap into the power of the free market and streamline government. Its principles and proposed elements are consistent with many of the ideas in the Green Chemistry Phase I report and with ideas discussed at recent Green Chemistry stakeholder workshops. While Green Chemistry focuses more on chemical substances that are in multiple products, and EPR focuses more on product categories in the waste stream that may contain problematic chemical substances, both are part of an overall effort to reduce risks to public health and the environment and to improve upstream product design to prevent waste and save resources.
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CIWMB staff submits the following for consideration. DTSC’s Green Chemistry Initiative and the CIWMB’s Extended Producer Responsibility Framework should be viewed as complementing each other, particularly in the sense that both strive to move towards cradle-to-cradle management of substances and/or products. One of the suggestions in the Phase I report references EPR. CIWMB staff recommends that the Green Chemistry Phase II report include a recommendation regarding the need for legislation authorizing an EPR framework based on the framework adopted by the CIWMB in September 2007 and refined in January 2008.
The remainder of this submittal provides additional information on the CIWMB’s EPR framework.
Two underlying issues drive the need for EPR:
1) landfill disposal tonnages that have crept upward in recent years; and
2) the enormous costs local governments face to manage products with hazardous substances that are banned from landfills.
Despite historic progress in achieving the waste diversion mandates of AB 939, the core objective of the law remains unfulfilled. Today we are disposing only marginally less in absolute tons than when the law was enacted nearly 20 years ago, and there has been an upward disposal trend in recent years. Roughly two-thirds of this material is comprised of manufactured products and packaging.
Currently, local governments are almost exclusively burdened with the responsibility of managing household hazardous wastes (HHW) banned by DTSC from landfills. HHW includes a variety of common products that contain hazardous substances, including thermostats, rechargeable and single-use batteries, and electronics. A Board study in the early 2000s calculated that an additional $41 million was needed by 32 jurisdictions to manage only three HHW product categories. San Luis Obispo County estimates that its current budget of $300,000 for managing HHW would need to increase to $4 million to adequately manage HHW. These examples provide glimpses of the burden being placed on local governments, a burden that statewide could be on the order of several hundred million dollars or more per year.
This is in part the result of a patchwork of different legislative approaches that typically result in the inconsistent application of environmental and public policy criteria and in the expansion of state bureaucracy to collect fees and administer payments. To address these issues, in February 2007 the Board adopted a set of Strategic Directives that included one on Producer Responsibility. The Board directed staff to seek statutory authority to foster "cradle-to-cradle" producer responsibility and develop producer-financed and producer-managed systems for product discards.
The Board adopted the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Framework guidance document as a policy priority in September 2007 and approved refinements in January 2008. This is intended to assist in developing EPR programs in California and is modeled after programs found elsewhere, primarily in Canada and Europe.
The policy places a shared responsibility on everyone involved in the life cycle of a product (including producers/brand owners, retailers, consumers, and local governments) for reducing the health and environmental impacts that result from production, use, and end-of-life (EOL) management of a product. Yet, as defined by the Board, EPR clearly places greater responsibility on producers who design and market products, while it removes costs placed on the general public.
The framework calls for making producers financially or physically responsible for implementing programs to deal with their products; this could be through collective producer associations or third-party organizations, and it could entail contractual arrangements with retailers, haulers, and local governments. To the extent that EOL costs are folded into a product’s total costs, this could also create an economic incentive to design products that generate less waste and pollution.
The EPR Framework presents goals, guiding principles, roles and responsibilities, suggestions for governance and initial thoughts on a product selection methodology. This includes providing authority for:
• Establishing agency-wide product selection procedures and selecting product categories;
• Requiring producers of selected categories to work with retailers, haulers, local jurisdictions, and other stakeholders, as appropriate, to develop and implement approved plans to address the targeted products;
• Specifying what provisions must be addressed in each plan (e.g., goals, fee or cost structure options, administration, reporting), while allowing flexibility in how provisions are implemented; and;
• Specifying enforcement mechanisms such as penalty procedures and provisions for non-compliance.
EPR offers the opportunity to tap into the power of the free market and streamline government. Its principles and proposed elements are consistent with many of the ideas in the Green Chemistry Phase I report and with ideas discussed at recent Green Chemistry stakeholder workshops. While Green Chemistry focuses more on chemical substances that are in multiple products, and EPR focuses more on product categories in the waste stream that may contain problematic chemical substances, both are part of an overall effort to reduce risks to public health and the environment and to improve upstream product design to prevent waste and save resources.