Sending Waste Back to the Source

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Despite loud protests from automakers, for example, the European Union passed EPR regulations this year on vehicles sold in its 15 member countries. By 2006, new cars can contain no heavy metals; they must be manufactured from recyclable materials, and producers will be responsible for disposing of them when the cars die. The EU also wants regulations for all products containing electrical circuits, especially computers.

John Ehrenfeld, head of MIT's Program on Technology, Business, and Environment, points out in the INFORM report that 'It is hard to imagine a product designer, say 10 years ago, paying much . . . attention to how a new product can be taken apart at the end of its useful life. But the new realities of sustainability and other environmental policies force such thinking on firms and their key personnel. Not to change is to risk loss of competitiveness and relevance in the future.'

EPR--the term was coined by Swedish economist Thomas Lindh- qvist--had its genesis during a serious landfill crisis that fueled the passage of Germany's revolutionary Ordinance on the Avoidance of Packaging Waste in 1991 even under the leadership of the conservative Christian Democratic party. National leaders like environment minister Klaus T'pfer, who later became head of the U.N.'s Environment Program, were staunch supporters.

The packaging ordinance led to the formation of an industry-funded recycling program. The nonprofit Duales System Deutschland (DSD) developed a green-dot logo, which it licenses to companies for a fee. A green dot on a product means that the producer is in compliance with the packaging law. By April 1993, 12,000 companies, many of them with U.S. corporate parents, had signed on to the recycling program. More to the point, they started using less packaging, such as no longer putting toothpaste tubes in boxes. Jim Motavalli of E Magazine (May/June 1997) sets the scene: 'On a drugstore's shelves in downtown Stuttgart, Germany, the toothpaste tubes are nakedly displayed, sitting upended on their flat caps like rows of little soldiers. Each tube is decorated with a tiny green dot.'

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