International Review of Waste Management Policy - Department of ...

incentivising producers to set up reuse systems. There is not yet unequivocal
evidence to support this – reuse systems depend on short delivery distances and
repeated reuse to score environmentally over on-way packaging. Allied to this,
policies to encourage a minimum recycled content, such as that in Belgium, in which
containers that are made with more than 50% recycled material are exempted from
the one-way container tax may help to support the recyclate market.
As referred to in the introduction, the other policy to complement producer
responsibility is PBU. Producer responsibility can favour one material type over
another, which PBU cannot. PBU can adjust the marginal cost per tonne of waste
management by location, reflecting the differing costs associated with urban or rural
areas.
Other policies which support producer responsibility are policies which make the
costs of dealing with residual waste relatively high (landfill / incineration levies and
bans). In these cases, irrespective of the distribution of costs, there will be incentives
to increase recycling and to prevent waste so as to avoid the high costs of residual
waste treatment / disposal.
13.10 Effect of the Policy on Pricing of Resources / Services
There are a number of incremental costs of the producer responsibility policy:
248
� Capital equipment (for reuse);
� Storage space (for reuse);
� Information gathering and reporting;
� ‘Marketing’ of the service;
� Establishment of the institutions;
� Administration overheads; and
� Operation of the recycling/recovery (covered by fees).
The cost of the policy applied to household packaging can be borne either by the
taxpayer, supporting the work of the municipalities, or the packers/fillers/importers,
or shared between the two. If the cost is partially or totally borne by industry, then
depending on the elasticity of demand for the product and the commercial conditions,
some or all of the cost may be passed onto the end consumer. This can be
considered as another cost of production, and the producers
(packers/fillers/importers) can reduce it effectively, for example by lightweighting,
material switching or alternative logistical processes.
One report identified the so-called financing need of different systems and suggested
that for the German system, this is far greater than that in the UK, France or the
Netherlands (see Table 13-9). The costs considered, however, clearly do not account
properly for the costs born by taxpayers and companies for the collection of
packaging, but only the funds which are required to be paid under the scheme being
operated. Hence, they show the costs falling mostly upon the fillers/importers. This
highlights, however, the difference between systems in the extent to which they are
likely to lead to costs being passed onto the consumer through the price of products
and services (rather than through taxation).
29/09/09