Amendments to the law on business responsibility for waste disposal prepared

In accordance with the instructions of the President, the Government has prepared the draft law on extended liability of producers and importers of goods and packaging (ERP). The EPR concept involves achieving a full balance between the packaging put into circulation and its disposal.

According to Deputy Prime Minister Victoria Abramchenko, the task of the state is to eliminate gray areas and legal gaps that allow evading responsibility for the disposal of goods, to form measures to involve recyclable materials in circulation.

“Every year, more than 60 million tons of municipal solid waste is generated in the country, most of which is sent to landfills. This is a serious environmental burden. In accordance with the instructions of the President, it is time to introduce the “polluter pays” principle. It is necessary to remove the financial burden from citizens and introduce fair business responsibility. Do not scare consumers with price increases or empty shelves, there are no prerequisites for this. In many countries of the world, the RPR has been implemented and the situation with the generation and disposal of waste has already been improved, and not at the expense of citizens. The bill is aimed at ensuring and monitoring the fulfillment of those obligations that are supposedly being fulfilled by business,” said Victoria Abramchenko.

The draft law, on behalf of the Deputy Prime Minister, will be discussed with all interested departments at the Government site in January 2022.

The purpose of the institution of extended producer responsibility is the formation of an effective state regulation model aimed at maximizing the return of secondary material resources to economic circulation and minimizing the volume of consumption waste disposal.

According to the current regulation, the liability of the manufacturer, importer of goods is limited to the established recycling standard. In view of this standard, an environmental fee is also paid.

At the same time, the mechanism of the institution of extended producer responsibility should be based on the principle of full responsibility of producers and importers of goods for the disposal of products put on the market. Therefore, the current approach is contrary to the “polluter pays” principle, in which all costs for the collection, treatment and disposal of waste should be covered by the system of extended producer responsibility.

At the same time, in the absence of the necessary capacities, the introduction of full responsibility for all types of goods was recognized as premature.

The bill, with the exception of packaging, proposes a gradual increase in the recycling rate for all types of goods, taking into account the transition period - at least 10% annually from 2023.

In addition, recycling standards cannot simultaneously be a “reducing factor” when paying an environmental fee, since the economic interest of manufacturers and importers in ensuring the creation of capacities for the processing and disposal of waste is lost.

Therefore, it is provided that in case of failure to reach the recycling standard, the amount of the environmental fee payable should be calculated based on the difference between the recycling standard and the achieved volume of waste recycling, doubled, but not more than 100%. This rule will apply from January 1, 2025.

At the same time, the less environmentally friendly, difficult to recycle the corresponding product or packaging, the higher the environmental fee rate. The methodology for calculating rates will be established by the Government.

In relation to packaging, the draft law provides for the obligation to ensure the disposal of waste in relation to the entire mass of packaging, and the use of the term “recycling standard” is excluded in relation to it.

For six years of operation, the RPR has not led to a reduction in waste and economic incentives for the development of the industry. In addition, based on the results of inspections of the submitted reports, Rosprirodnadzor often reveals incompleteness and incorrectness of filling out the reports, and the unreliability of the information indicated in them.

Therefore, the bill implies strengthening control over the actual disposal. An important provision of the bill was the verification of persons engaged in waste disposal. To do this, a register of utilizers will be maintained.

To eliminate the practice of concluding fake contracts for the disposal of waste from the use of goods, the bill provides for the provision by recyclers of information on concluded contracts for disposal, on the volume of disposed waste, as well as the availability of appropriate waste disposal capacities. If false information is revealed, an underpaid environmental fee will be charged for the volume of non-utilized waste.

In addition, it is proposed to introduce a ban on the sale of goods and packaging from January 1, 2025 if information about manufacturers (and not goods) is not included in the register. This will make it possible to implement the “polluter pays” principle and eliminate the legal gap in which the manufacturer of goods or packaging can evade responsibility for the disposal of generated waste.

“Sorting 100% and reducing the amount of waste sent to landfills by half is one of the goals that the President set by Decree 474. To achieve these goals and create conditions for the environmental well-being of the population, the authorities create clear rules of the game. And so the introduction of new rules and the reform of the ROP are inevitable. I would also like to draw your attention to the fact that the ROP institution was introduced in Russia back in 2015, but it operated on a trust basis, without the electronic registers that we have now begun to create. That is, the business had enough time to prepare. As for consumers, the implementation of the EPR reform will not affect their lives, there is no risk of empty shelves in stores. When traffic control cameras appeared on the roads, cars did not disappear from the streets,” said Denis Butsaev, head of the Russian Environmental Operator.

Source: https://news.solidwaste.ru