"EPR programs can be best understood as changing the traditional balance of responsibilities among the manufacturers and distributors of consumer goods, consumers and governments with regard to waste management. Although they take many forms, these programs are all characterized by the continued involvement of producers and/or distributors with commercial goods at the post-consumer stage. EPR extends the traditional environmental responsibilities that producers and distributors have previously been assigned (i.e. worker safety, prevention and treatment of environmental releases from production, financial and legal responsibility for the sound management of production wastes) to include management at the post-consumer stage."¹

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines EPR as an environmental policy approach in which a producer’s responsibility, physical and/or financial, for a product is extended to the post-consumer stage of a product’s life cycle. There are two key features of EPR policy: (1) the shifting of responsibility (physically and/or economically, fully or partially) upstream to the producer and away from municipalities, and (2) to provide incentives to producers to take environmental considerations into the design of the product. The OECD identifies a number of guiding principles for EPR.

"EPR was identified as a principle and strategy for waste minimization at the 1995 Waste Minimization Workshop held in Washington D.C. In this context, the principle of Extended Producer Responsibility would be stated as: Producers of products should bear a significant degree of responsibility (physical and/or financial) not only for the environmental impacts of their products downstream from the treatment and/or disposal of the product, but also for their upstream activities inherent in the selection of materials and in the design of products.

With the point of incidence at the post-consumer phase of the product’s life cycle, an implicit signal is sent to the producer to alter the design of his products so as to reduce the environmental impact in question. Producers accept responsibility when they design their products to minimize environmental impacts over the product’s life cycle and when they accept physical and/or economic responsibility (full or partial) for those impacts that cannot be eliminated by design.

A primary function of EPR is the transfer of the costs and/or physical responsibility of waste management from local government authorities and the general taxpayer to the producer. Environmental costs of treatment and disposal could then be incorporated into the cost of the product. This creates the setting for a market to emerge that truly reflects the environmental impacts of the product, and in which consumers could make their selection accordingly."¹

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