Our landfills didn’t use to overflow with unnecessary packaging and obsolete products. Janine Derry looks at extended producer responsibility, a not-so-new idea that could ensure our landfills are free of products and packaging once more

A hundred years ago, products comprised less than 10 per cent of all municipal waste – the rest was coal ash and food scraps. At the time, local authorities assumed responsibility for waste management because there was a public health crisis arising, mainly from mismanagement of organic wastes.

Times have changed. As Bill Sheehan, an American waste activist and director of the Product Policy Institute, points out: “This was before the consumer society and proliferation of consumer goods. Now, three-quarters of municipal waste is manufactured products and packaging designed to be thrown away. A waste stream dominated by products and packaging is difficult to manage safely in traditional municipal waste systems.” He also suggests that, ironically, universal public waste management services enabled the proliferation of throwaway products because in the current system, the taxpayer bears the cost of disposal, not the manufacturer.

As a result, by the late 1980s governments of northern Europe were facing severe landfill shortages. Looking for ways to deal with the problem, Germany adopted its Packaging Ordinance in 1991. The new law, the first of its kind, shifted the responsibility for the disposal of products and related costs to manufacturers. However, it became clear the policy’s benefits went beyond simply reducing the pressure on landfills and in May 1999, under Germany Presidency, the EU concluded: “In seeking to achieve sustainable development in Europe, increasing importance attaches [itself] to the impacts on the environment associated with the pre-production process, manufacture, distribution, use and disposal of products. Environment policy must concentrate more on developing and implementing an integrated approach that deals with the entire lifecycle of products.”