No litter in the hut: in the Russian Federation, they found a way to reduce the fee for garbage collection by 15 percent

RSPP proposes to transfer responsibility for packaging recycling to its manufacturers.

Business has proposed a reform that will help reduce household fees for garbage collection by 10-15% from 2022. This will happen after the improvement of the concept of extended producer responsibility (EPR), “Izvestia” was told in “Business Russia”. The document is being considered by the government. Among the changes - to oblige manufacturers to be responsible for the disposal of 100% of their products. It is also necessary to shift the responsibility for packaging recycling to its manufacturers - the RUIE has sent a letter to the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Victoria Abramchenko, in which it agrees with this need (Izvestia has it). So far, only manufacturers of paper containers support the measure - according to their forecast, in three years the cost of goods in packaging will decrease by 0.5% due to this. Manufacturers of aluminum, plastic and glass containers are against the transfer of responsibility and, on the contrary, are predicting an increase in prices.

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The Russian government is working to improve the concept of EPR. Its main goal should be to create effective economic incentives for manufacturers of goods and packaging to use recyclable materials. This will allow the country to move to a cyclical economy, according to a letter from the Commission on Trade and Consumer Market of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) to the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Victoria Abramchenko.

Among the proposals for changing the EPR concept is to oblige manufacturers to be responsible for the disposal of 100% of their products (instead of 10–20%, as it is now), as well as to shift responsibility for the collection, removal and recycling of packaging to its manufacturers.

“The members of the commission agree that the responsibility for the disposal of packaging should be borne by its manufacturers, the number of which does not exceed 5 thousand,” the RSPP letter says.

This will increase the transparency of the EPR implementation process and allow the state to administer it more efficiently, the document says.

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By mid-December 2020, a report should be prepared to Russian President Vladimir Putin on proposals for correcting the EPR mechanism. And after about six months, the adoption of normative legal acts introducing the changes will drag on, State Duma deputy Vladimir Pushkarev told Izvestia.

Deputy Prime Minister Victoria Abramchenko told Izvestia that the RUIE letter had been received and the union's proposals were being considered by the relevant departments. She explained that at the moment a fundamental decision has been made to increase the utilization rate, but the final figure has not yet been approved. It is obvious that it will be ambitious - the analysis of the mechanism's operation showed that the EPR mechanism in its current form is ineffective. The transfer of responsibility for packaging recycling to its manufacturers is still being discussed, the deputy prime minister said.

Reduce the load

Today, the population pays about 190 billion rubles a year for garbage disposal, and companies for ecological collection within the framework of EPR - only 2.3 billion rubles. At the same time, a significant increase in the sorting and processing of waste is not recorded either. The ROP should also help to reduce the financial burden on citizens, said the representative of Victoria Abramchenko.

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If the innovations are adopted, the fee for garbage collection for the population can be reduced by 10-15%, said Natalya Belyaeva, deputy chairman of the committee for the recycling of waste and secondary resources of Delovaya Rossiya. Most likely, it will be possible to reduce the cost of the service from 2022, says Vladimir Pushkarev.

When it is necessary to recycle 100%, manufacturers will begin to take recyclable materials from the population. Now they mostly either pay eco-collection for 10–20% of their products, or order processing from special companies. Those, in turn, purchase recyclable materials from retailers. Now those responsible for the disposal of their products will have to pay the regoperators for the removal of waste collected by citizens separately. The amount that the producers will pay can reduce the expenses of the population, says Nikolai Valuev, first deputy chairman of the State Duma committee on ecology. This is about 10-15%, he agrees.

The removal of containers with recyclable materials for the population should be made free of charge, people should pay only for the collection of mixed waste, the professor of Moscow University. S.Yu. Witte Denis Kondratiev.

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The more people collect recyclable materials, the more the fee for garbage collection will decrease - within 2-5 years, the amount in receipts can decrease by 50%, added Natalya Belyaeva. Today, garbage collection fees are calculated per apartment area. For example, in Moscow it is 5.23 rubles per square meter. m.

The transfer of responsibility for the disposal of packaging to its manufacturers will simplify control over the implementation of the EPR - there are about 5 million manufacturers of goods in the Russian Federation (including small individual entrepreneurs who often do not even know about such a duty), and about 5 thousand of packaging manufacturers. Fewer companies easier and more effective to control, explained Natalia Belyaeva.

In the world, the manufacturer pays for the waste that is generated from the use of products, including packaging. It is important that everyone is responsible for what he has done, emphasized State Duma deputy Sergei Vostretsov.

Ruslan Gubaidullin, Executive Director of the Clean Country Association, noted that now tariffs for garbage collection are minimal. Therefore, the funds that will be collected within the framework of the EPR should be used as compensation for the creation of a system for its separate collection in the country, he believes.

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Packaging manufacturers are divided. Packaging manufacturers support all proposals. As Alexei Sergeev, executive director of the League of Waste Paper Converters (including paper packaging manufacturers) told Izvestia, if container manufacturers are obliged to recycle it, a closed-cycle economy will be created - companies will supply themselves with cheap recyclables. Thus, after about three years, the price of goods may decrease by 0.5% due to the reduction in the cost of packaging, he said.

However, Danone believes that shifting responsibility for disposal to packaging manufacturers will not lead to a decrease in the price of goods for the consumer - these costs will simply be included in the cost of packaging.

- We understand the approach in which responsibility is on the one who packs: he releases the goods directly into circulation, which affects the environment, and is interested in maintaining acceptable purchase prices for packaging and final consumer prices for the goods, - noted in the press - company service.

President of the National Union of Printers Sergei Radvanetsky believes that the transfer of responsibility is categorically unacceptable - packaging manufacturers are only performers, they do not control the process of selling and disposing of goods. When transferring responsibility, manufacturers of goods will not be motivated to buy more environmentally friendly and therefore more expensive packaging, added Natalia Selezneva, President of the Association of Polyethylene Terephthalate Producers and Processors.

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Now the system does not regulate the activities of packaging manufacturers in any way - they are not interested in secondary raw materials, says Lyudmila Manitskaya, executive director of the Russian Union of Dairy Enterprises (RSPMO). As a result, manufacturers of goods are striving to fulfill the EPR, but many types of containers are still impossible to recycle, she said.

Irina Bakhtina, vice president of Unilever in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, believes that ROP should not only focus on waste disposal, but also serve as a barrier to the release of packaging that is unsuitable for further processing on the market. This can be done as efficiently as possible only at the level of the source of her education, she noted.

The system for collecting recyclable materials should be organized by the state, says Viktor Osipov, president of StekloSouz. But if the responsibility is nevertheless transferred to the manufacturers of packaging, its cost may rise - this will also affect the price of goods, believes Natalya Kudenkova, head of the Consumer Goods sector of the aluminum association. However, she agrees that the rate of disposal should be increased step by step.

Earlier Izvestia wrote that the initiative to transfer responsibility was not supported by water producers either. In their opinion, this will lead to a rise in the price of bottles by a third and an increase in prices for final products.

A preliminary assessment of a possible rise in consumer prices for the main groups of goods with an increase in utilization standards to 100% showed that there will be no noticeable rise in price. An additional contribution to consumer inflation is estimated at 0.1-0.2 percentage points, the Ministry of Economic Development told Izvestia.

Materials: https://sotsprof.org/