Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging litter
#00092
Make the companies that put packaging on the market pay for its end-of-life and cleanup, and reward less-wasteful designs. Shifts cost and design incentives upstream to the producers who created the litter, rather than onto taxpayers.
Parent issue
#00078 Single-use packaging and carrier bags escape into the environment
Sustainable Development Goals
Location
Description
Mechanism
Require producers to fund the collection, recycling, and litter-cleanup costs of the packaging they place on the market — usually via fees to a producer-responsibility organisation, modulated so harder-to-recycle or more-littered formats cost more. This internalises end-of-life costs otherwise borne by municipalities and taxpayers, and pushes producers toward less wasteful design.
Where it fits
A systemic upstream instrument for the single-use-packaging problem. It underpins and funds other measures (collection, deposit systems, cleanup) rather than acting alone, and increasingly draws on brand-level litter data to assign accountability.
Operating profile and limits
Strong on cost incidence and design incentives; litter impact is indirect and depends on fee design (true eco-modulation) and on funds actually reaching collection and cleanup. Schemes are administratively complex and still maturing for litter specifically; weak fee structures blunt the incentive.
Sub-issues
0Case studies
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