Comment The 78th annual U.S. Conference of Mayors was held in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, from June 11-15.
American mayors from cities across the country met two weeks ago to discuss energy, the environment, increasing jobs, leadership in local government, and policy, amongst other things…
Among the topics discussed, many mayors were passionate about change in legislation for green initiatives — namely recycling and disposal of product packaging and material.
The mayors discussed the notion of “extended producer responsibility” and are trying to drum up Congressional support for state governments — for those state governments to hold people responsible for produce disposal, both from products they manufacture, or from products they consume.
What, exactly, is extended producer responsibility?
Product stewardship, also referred to as extended producer responsibility, is the concept that makes product manufacturers responsible for the environmental impacts at end-of-life of their products, and typically comes about in the form of funding or creating recycling and disposal programs.
Product stewardship calls on the companies that make products with hard-to-recycle parts or packaging responsible for the cost associated with their disposal.
This extends to products that are considered hazardous waste or that cannot be disposed of with the majority of recyclable items or trash. (See: light bulbs, batteries, needles, remote controls and cell phones and old computers and other electronics.)
The push for product stewardship by mayors across the nation comes from interest in continued green initiatives, yes... But more importantly, programs that foster product stewardship pad the bottom line.
In holding producers accountable for the cost of disposal, tax payers and city governments can put money that would be used for this process toward other projects.
This money can otherwise be spent on handling those tricky-to-throw-away items, like batteries and broken digital cameras.
In fact product stewardship is taking its place among the top priorities for state governments that find with increasingly regularly that green initiatives are good for the city's overall wellbeing and the budget.
Twenty-two states — nearly half the Union — currently have laws requiring companies of certain lighting and electronic products to manage the collection of and proper recycling and disposal of products when consumers are done with use or the product has reached the end of its life.
Many electronics companies now have programs (albeit voluntary) for consumers to return products for safe disposal.
The companies often reuse parts or rebuild new products from returned electronics.
Washington and Oregon actually have state-level laws that require manufacturers to cough up the dollars for the takeback programs of their electronics.
To date, 17 states currently have passed and funded electronics laws.
Many are implementing programs that give credits to companies that “reclaim” the product waste they’ve produced that year.
Minnesota, for example, includes in the state law a requirement for manufacturers to take back a set amount of electronics. This amount is based on how much the particular manufacturer sold in the state.
Manufacturers have the opportunity to take back more than the required amount of electronics, and in doing so, the companies are incentivized by credits that carry into the next year.
Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, and Texas state governments have officially adopted a model by the Product Policy Institute for more stringent guidelines on product stewardship laws.
It seems the news lately has been filled with headlines regarding responsibility: the still highly-debated carbon tax policy… the now-obvious negligence on the part of BP (and other oil companies before it) in a massive spill, and who will foot the bill for cleanup…
When you make a mess, you clean it up.
It sounds very elementary — perhaps because it is — but when will society implement that idea we first learned in the sandbox to all sectors equally — private, corporate, and government?
Product stewardship, to me, sounds like the line in the sand. On either side are corporate social responsibility and consumer responsibility.
If both parties are held accountable for how they manufacture products, and with what materials, and then in disposing properly of those products, perhaps we will all be inspired to make smarter decisions in the life-cycle of the product.
Take it from someone who just brought ten years’ worth of old electronics from her parents’ basement to the local collection center last weekend…
Brigid
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