On the road to effective producer responsibility for vehicles

Who pays for the end-of-life treatment and the environmental impacts of vehicles? Fynn Hauschke, Stéphane Arditi and Roberta Arbinolo explore how the new EU law on vehicles can increase accountability within the automotive sector through Extended Producer Responsibility. 

This article is the third in a series analysing various aspects of the new EU Regulation on Vehicle Design and Management of End-of-Life Vehicles. The first piece investigated the potential and roadblocks for the regulation to set the automotive sector on a circular path. The second article delved into the topic of circular design. The article was originally published by Auto Recycling World.

“Those responsible for environmental damage should pay to cover the costs”: this no-brainer is a key foundation of EU environmental policy, known as the ‘Polluter Pays Principle’. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) systems are one of the go-to measures to implement this principle in practice. As the name suggests, EPR systems extend the responsibility of producers to incorporate the anticipated environmental impacts and the related societal costs of their products.

In the EU, Extended Producer Responsibility systems have been introduced to varying extents across different sectors such as batteries, packaging, and electronics, with new systems under development for textiles and wastewater treatment.  Globally, EPR is also being explored within the global treaty on plastic pollution. While traditionally focused on covering the cost of waste collection and treatment, properly deployed EPR systems can also promote circular design, cleaner production and waste prevention by facilitating reuse, repair and non-toxic cycles.