What Is EPR?
Thomas Lindhqvist is the Swedish clean production expert who is credited with coining the term "Extended Producer Responsibility" (EPR) in 1990. According to Lindhqvist, EPR is a policy principle to promote total lifecycle environmental improvements of product systems by extending responsibilities of the manufacturer of the product to various product's life cycle, and especially to the take-back, recovery and final disposal of the product.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), of which Canada is a member, defines EPR as follows: a policy in which the producer's financial and/or physical responsibility for a product is extended to the post-consumer stage of the product's life cycle. It specifically focuses on reducing the environmental impacts of a product at the post-consumer phase.
There are two key features to an EPR policy:
- the responsibility for a product at it's post consumption phase is shifted upstream in the production-consumption chain, to the producer, and
- it provides incentives to producers to incorporate environmental considerations into the design of their product.
For further information on EPR, refer to the Background Paper.
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