Polluter pays: we think it’s an idea whose time has come, and the public agree

This Inside Track long read is by Heather Plumpton, senior policy analyst, and Libby Peake, head of resource policy, at Green Alliance.

When it comes to some of the products that have the biggest impact on the environment, the UK is one of the highest consuming countries in the world. And it is one of the greatest producers of waste. People in the UK buy more clothes per person than any other country in Europe. We also produce more plastic waste per person than any country apart from the US, and more electronic waste per person than anywhere else apart from Norway. The UN estimates that per person resource consumption should be between six and eight tonnes of material a year. But, in the UK, we are using a massive 14.7 tonnes per person.

People and the planet pay a high price for overconsumptionExcessive resource use and the waste it causes are hardwired into our economy. Of course, many businesses are profiting from this approach, but it comes at a high cost.

The planet pays a price, as ecosystems are damaged and destroyed as we extract the materials to make more and more products, which we then bury or burn after only a few short years of use, releasing pollutants and gases that harm nature and cause climate change.

But we are all paying a price too. At the moment, when people try to do the right thing and recycle their old products they can be charged a fee, particularly for the collection of large household appliances like washing machines. Local councils bear most of the cost of recycling and disposing of packaging, a cost which is ultimately paid for by the public through council tax.

Councils and the public have no control over how products are designed or how easy they are to recycle, so they are stuck paying unfairly for an inefficient, environmentally damaging system.

The polluter pays principle is popularHowever, there’s an idea to correct this unfairness which is gaining traction in the guise of ‘extended producer responsibility’ (EPR). This simple idea means the full lifecycle costs of products – including, but ideally not limited to, waste management and recycling – are paid for by those who have control over products’ environmental impacts, ie the companies that design, produce and profit from them. The idea is that it will encourage businesses to think about how they can keep their products from ending up as waste by making them much easier to reuse, repair and recycle.

This embodies the principle of ‘polluter pays’, enshrined in the 2021 Environment Act, which is consistently popular with the public. People believe businesses should be responsible for the impacts of the products they produce. In recent polling, conducted for Green Alliance’s Circular Economy Task Force by YouGov, 58 per cent of people thought clothing producers were most responsible for their industry’s environmental impacts.

Encouraging business innovation improves waste managementAn EPR policy usually works by charging companies fees. This internalises the cost of dealing with their products at the end of life. Ideally, impacts at other points in a product’s lifecycle would also be covered but, in practice,  EPR policies mostly focus on the point when a product ceases to be useful. This fee should vary based on a product’s environmental performance: the greater its impacts, or the harder it is to reuse or recycle, the higher the fee. Often, producers are also expected to cover the cost of running communications campaigns and setting up the collection infrastructure for reuse and recycling.

As businesses are motivated to innovate and cut costs, this approach can mean systems are more economical. In 2017, when Green Alliance first advocated it for packaging in the UK, we pointed to the example of Belgium where the business-run recycling system cost 25 per cent less per person than in England. At the time, Belgium also had the highest packaging recycling rate in the EU, while the UK had the lowest.

Change is comingFortunately, EPR has now gained political traction in the UK. For some products (electronics, vehicles, batteries and packaging) producers already pay in different ways for the end of life management of their products. But these contributions are often far from adequate.

The government is designing a new EPR system which will expect producers to cover all of the recycling and disposal costs for their packaging, and a wider overhaul is promised. Concerns now centre on how the UK’s inefficient system can be improved fairly. Unlike Belgium, the intention is for the public sector to remain heavily involved in running the scheme, rather than handing it over to businesses to run and optimise.

The government believes it must take this approach as councils have a legal duty to collect packaging from households. But this isn’t the case for other goods, like electronics, where producers could, and should, be given financial and operational responsibilities for dealing with their products.

Recycling should be easierFour years after it was first promised, a consultation on EPR for e-waste recently settled on modest changes to ensure businesses provide free recycling services, both in store and at the kerbside. This expands on the obligations of some retailers to accept people’s discarded items free in store for recycling. It aims to tackle the fact that many are still charging to collect larger appliances, even when customers have new products delivered at the same time.

The changes seek to make it as easy as possible for people to recycle. Some larger retailers have objected because they will no longer be able to charge, say £20, to take away a used fridge. They say that a bill of £1 billion will be passed onto consumers. We haven’t seen the analysis behind this estimate but some have cast doubt on the size of that figure.

Some companies, though, support reform. Antony Sant, managing director of a small electronics wholesaler, told a recent conference on waste electricals that, if done well, the changes could drive “more and better quality WEEE [Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment] and that means more reuse” and other benefits. As he says, it could drive much greater value retention from waste electricals so, even if that £1 billion estimate is right, it could be offset in a business-led system set up to derive more income from better recycling. In fact, Material Focus recently reported that £1 billion in precious metals is being lost in the electronics that aren’t currently being recycled. An effective EPR system should ensure that costs are kept down – for producers and consumers – by preserving the valuable resources in goods and increasing efficiency wherever possible.

Bold action has strong public supportIf these new proposals are fully implemented, it would be a step in the right direction. But it’s still only a small step. More focus is needed on reducing the UK’s outsized environmental footprint.

Making producers responsible for their impacts should be expanded to other goods. For batteries, a promised consultation on EPR is long overdue. And the government has gone worryingly quiet on extending the scheme to other high impact sectors, like textiles, furniture and construction, which it promised six years ago in its 2018 resources and waste strategy

All our research and polling – including our latest report on the fashion industry – shows how much people overwhelmingly want government to make companies take responsibility for the effect their products have on the environment and where they end up. They want products that last and, when items wear out, they want them to be easy to repair or recycle. The UK is taking baby steps to improve, but far too slowly to deal with the scale of the problem, and people’s expectations are nowhere near being met. EPR is a powerful idea that can change that. Now is not the time to drop it.