Review Of The Producer Responsibility Initiative Model In ... - Repak

The European Commission has issued a Communication on “A resource-efficient
Europe - Flagship Initiative under the Europe 2020 Strategy”, which provides a longterm
framework for coordinated actions across many policy areas and agendas,
including climate change, energy, transport, industry and raw materials. The European
Commission has also issued a complementary Communication on a “Roadmap to a
Resource-Efficient Europe”, which sets out medium and long term objectives as well as
the means needed to achieve these objectives. The Flagship Initiative and the
Roadmap are designed to lead the EU into economic transformation towards a more
sustainable and competitive economy, and to contribute to world-wide efforts to ensure
a transition towards a green economy. Some of the key milestones for the year 2020
on the Resource Efficiency Roadmap will be of fundamental importance to producers
and, accordingly, will have profound implications for producer responsibility schemes.
These milestones are to be facilitated by the implementation of a wide range of
measures by the Commission and Member States.
Relevant milestones identified for 2020 include:
Citizens and public authorities should have the right incentives to choose the
most resource efficient products and services, through the provision of
appropriate price signals and clear environmental information. The desire of
consumers for more sustainable purchases should stimulate eco-innovation in
companies and to supply more resource efficient goods and services. Minimum
environmental performance standards should be established to remove the
least resource efficient and most polluting products from the market.
Market and policy incentives that reward business investments in efficiency
should be in place, stimulating new innovations in resource efficient production
methods that are widely used. All companies and their investors should be able
to measure and benchmark their lifecycle resource efficiency. Economic growth
and wellbeing shall have been decoupled from resource inputs and shall derive
primarily from increases in the value of products and associated services.
Waste generated per capita shall be in absolute decline and waste will be
managed as a resource with recycling and re-use of waste being economically
attractive options for public and private actors due to the widespread availability
of separate collection and the development of functional markets for secondary
raw materials. More materials, including materials having a significant impact on
the environment and critical raw materials, should be recycled.
Waste legislation should be fully implemented and illegal shipments of waste
shall have been eradicated. High quality recycling should be ensured, energy
recovery should be limited to non recyclable materials and land filling should be
virtually eliminated.
Scientific breakthroughs and sustained eco-innovation efforts should
dramatically improve the understanding, management, reduction of the use,
reuse, recycling, substitution, safeguarding and valuation of resources. These
achievements should be facilitated through increases in investment, along with
greater coherence in addressing the societal challenges of resource efficiency
through gains from smart specialisation and cooperation within EU Research.
A major shift from taxation of labour towards environmental taxation should lead
to a substantial increase in the share of environmental taxes in public revenues.
Stakeholders at all levels should be mobilised to ensure that policy, financing,
investment, research and innovation are coherent and mutually reinforcing.
Public and private decision-makers will be guided by ambitious resource
efficiency targets and robust indicators in the drive for transformation of the
economy towards greater resource efficiency.
Resource efficiency should be recognised as a global priority and progress on it
should be secured on the basis of agreed approaches.
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