The growing awareness about extended producer responsibility in India is quite evident. Some describe EPR as a proactive business measure, while others define EPR as an environmental protection strategy. Ever wondered why you should care about EPR at all? More importantly, what is extended producer responsibility all about? Let’s explain:
What is extended producer responsibility, and why is it important?
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is a stringent policy approach for entrepreneurs, manufacturers, recyclers, and importers. According to the environmental policy, producers and business owners are entailed to rethink, strategise, and improve the entire life cycle of products from scratch. This implies that a producer is responsible for figuring out sustainable product designs that serve long and keep a close watch on the lifecycle of products post-consumption.
If you are not already aware, the constant demand for newer and innovative products every day implies increased scavenging and mining of natural resources. Wondering why? Well, products, especially electronics, comprise a good ratio of naturally sourced metals, including gold, copper, and more. Little did you know that the natural ores are not infinite in nature. Frequent mining eventually causes a scarcity of resources. Besides, dumping the spent electronics in landfills also implies a waste of valuable and limited resources.
The odds of dumping e-waste in the open are not unknown. As explained earlier, electronic gadgets comprise overwhelming quantities of metals and toxic chemicals. These substances, when left exposed, leach into the soil and groundwater. Furthermore, the chemicals contaminate the air, groundwater, and the environment in general. What’s more, severe toxic exposure is hazardous for human health too. It spikes respiratory disorders, ill health, and menacing diseases like cancer.
EPR in waste management aims to curb and downsize the mountains of electronic garbage in landfills. The strategic environmental policy also envisions reducing pollution and elevating toxicity scores. In short, EPR is a well-thought and pragmatic business response to the looming threat of environmental and climatic crises.
Why is it essential to care about EPR in India today?
The struggle to create a clean, green, and better environment is not unknown. Environmentalists have a hard time preaching to commoners the importance of reducing waste and tackling trash in a proper way. Why just individuals? Businesses and manufacturers, too, care less when disposing of their trashed resources or keeping a count of the consumer-used junk. Are you aware of the aftermath? Well, India ranks high as the 3rd leading producer of e-waste in India. What’s more, the country generates more than 300 million tonnes of plastic every year. Believe it or not, the numbers are constantly on the rise, also ensuring that the future of the country is at stake.
Circular economy and sustainability step up as the only promising solution to grapple with the degrading environmental conditions and social impact. Wondering why not recycling? To begin with, recycling crops up as an ‘end-of-the-pipe’ solution to a linear model of product consumption, i.e. take, make, and dispose. Recycling fails to necessitate the importance of creating sustainable product designs that are easy to conserve and last longer in the production and consumption cycle.
Think about it – how often have you been advised to stay clear of using plastic bottles and switch to bottles made up of recyclable materials instead? It is a no-brainer that plastic is difficult to upcycle, threatening to the environment, and diminishing in value with time.
Circular economy, on the contrary, focuses on creating products that are manufactured to last several lifecycles. It is a preliminary approach that promotes keeping resources in closed loops and creating durable, long-lasting, and easy-to-conserve products for consumption. This naturally reduces the frequency of recycling and cuts down the mounting volumes of waste generated.
EPR in waste management ensures that businesses and manufacturers implement circularity in its optimum capacity. Policymakers make it mandatory for companies and producers to mitigate the environmental impacts of products throughout their life cycles.
Must-know facts about EPR
It is no surprise that businesses have a hard time staying abreast of the ever-evolving compliance and environmental regulations. EPR e-waste encourages companies to embrace a sustainable design and manufacturing process. Here’s what it implies:
Manufacturers must utilise recyclable materials.
Businesses must demonstrate efforts that propagate maximum reusing and recycling of resources.
Introduce buyback programmes to incentivise and lure business owners.
Simply put, extended producer responsibility in India is a scalable and practical approach that guarantees the best environmental results. The policy ascertains that only manufacturers are truly responsible for bearing the costs of sustainability. Right from sourcing raw materials to recycling and end-of-life products, it is not the local government but manufacturers who are solely responsible for the incurred costs.
To conclude:
EPR is a strategic answer to the social impact and growing scales of hazardous industrial waste. The policy approach drives businesses and governments to collaborate and rethink about ways a product is used and consumed. It is a pragmatic drive to upgrade companies into a more sustainable, regulated, and upgraded name. Helping entrepreneurs further the agenda of circular economy and sustainability is Karo Sambhav. The future-driven producer responsibility organisation organises equipped collection centres to gather and house scrapped electronics and solid waste to treat, recycle, and process the spent products.
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