Implementing producer responsibility: managing end-of-life consumables in an IT-service industry

Abstract

An important tenet of the producer responsibility concept is to place the responsibility for end-of-life management of consumer goods with the identified producer of the goods. This concept has been used, for example, in the context of the proposed EU Directive on Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE). Over the last two years ICL has implemented a pilot scheme for the management of end-of-life compact disc (CD) material in response to evolving EU legislation. The paper outlines the design and operation of this scheme and discusses some of the policy lessons which emerge from it. It highlights that there are tensions between environmental benefits and economic incentives in improving end-of-life management. These make it desirable to push responsibility up the supply chain but this is hampered by the complexities within the business-to-business relationships. The extent to which these complexities may undermine the producer responsibility concept is considered.