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

The report concluded that total employment generated by recycling paints,
flammables including gasoline and pesticides is estimated at just over 73 FTEs based
on information provided by Product Care.
The collection Depots account for about 68% (50 FTEs). The rest is spread across
Product Care administration (8%, 5 3/4 FTEs), Product Care consolidation plant (18%,
13 FTEs), and transportation (6%, about 4.5 FTEs).
32.3 Environmental Benefits
There are a number of direct environmental benefits associated with the recycling of
paint. Benefits include avoided contamination and avoided subsequent remedial
clean up costs from improperly disposed products. There are also greenhouse gas
benefits in recycling the paint container, whether it may be steel or plastic.
The policy also provides a number of associated environmental benefits. As the
schemes in Canada are managed by producers, it is in their interest to ensure that all
costs associated with the recycling of paints are reduced as far as possible (as the
required revenue to cover costs would be reflected in the price of goods sold). This
driver has undoubtedly influenced technology innovation/change and aided
additional environmental benefits.
32.4 Implementation Costs
Comprehensive studies on implementation costs have been unable to be found thus
far.
32.5 Effects on Technical Change / Innovation
Probably, the involvement of the paint suppliers in the recycling of paint by the use of
producer responsibility schemes has been a key driver in the innovation towards
production, sale and use more environmentally friendly paint products. We have
been, however, unable to discover any direct evidence linking these factors together
thus far.
32.6 Social and Distributional Consequences
The impacts of the policy are likely to be regressive. Here, it is worth noting that the
levies used to cover costs tend to be proportionately higher for smaller volumes of
paint. There may be good reasons for this where the costs of recovery of paints and
the containers are concerned. However, the environmental issues associated with
paints might be expected to be linked to volume if there is a considerable amount of
unused paint being discarded. On the other hand, if the paint containers are more
often than not empty, then the charge structure might be appropriate.
In some schemes operating at a community level, old paints are made available to
social projects and low income households to help reduce the costs of paint.
32.7 Complementary Policies
A number of complementary policies have been used in conjunction with this policy,
most notably the use of a producer responsibility scheme. The majority of other
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International Review of Waste Policy: Annexes