Producer Responsibility at a Turning Point?

Either the EU can abandon the intent that EPR policy instruments create product design incentives, making EPR simply a tool for shifting the cost of WEEE management away from government, or the EU can make a reinvigorated attempt to realize the incentive potential of EPR. environmental concerns into the design of products. If producers were made responsible for end-of-life management (i.e., reuse, recycling, energy recovery, treatment, and/or final disposal) of products, they would find it in their self-interest to anticipate end-of-life costs and obligations and design their products to minimize those costs. Prices of new products would reflect those end-of-life obligations, and producers that were successful in competing in this manner would be able to sell their products more cheaply than those that did not engage in design for environment (DfE). In this respect, EPR would also provide incentives to consumers, because product prices could reflect the producers’ relative success in meeting these goals. This vision also included other aspirations. One was that the resulting policy schemes would be dynamic—that is, as the product mix, production and processing technologies, or market and societal conditions changed, so too would the responses by the producers facing EPR requirements. Advocates of EPR hoped that when the task of meeting the goals of EPR was assigned