The Role Manufacturers Play
Author: John Gillispie
Most individuals see recycling as their own responsibility, either through voluntary action, or, in some jurisdictions, in accordance with the law. But in either case most recycling programs are geared toward the consumer handling their own waste.
And so it is for the producers. Manufacturers generally view safe environmental practices at their own production level - regulated plant emissions, disposal or storage of hazardous waste, anti-dumping laws, etc. But after the product leaves the plant, its post-production life is out of their hands. This is the norm in the U.S, even though other potentially impactful phases — packaging and labeling, transportation and shipping, and, of course, disposal — all pose their own unique environmental threats.
Thus, the final resting place of products will be determined by the end user, the consumer.
This current system, however, is not even close to fully addressing the problem in this age of “going green.”
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) places the environmental responsibility for a product beyond its manufacture point and throughout the product's lifecycle, including the post consumer phase.
This realigns manufacturers' views on how they should stream line initial procedures to accommodate the downstream effects - the Spray-All spray bottle is an excellent tool for following such practice at the post consumer level for chemical manufacturers.
The links below provide excellent information on this concept.
- http://www.grrn.org/resources/producer_responsibility.html
- http://www.ilsr.org/recycling/epr/index.html
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_producer_responsibility