The mass production of goods within the global market is at an all-time high with fast fashion, fast food, and fast learning leading the way.
What’s the catch you may ask? Easy: waste. As a result of the increasing demand for the supply of goods, and the aftermath that comes with disposing of those goods, commercial law transactions and legislative changes are requiring large entities to reassess how they can reduce their environmental footprint.
Extended Producer Responsibility
The National Environmental Management Waste Act 59 of 2008 (the Act) regulates how waste is managed in South Africa, providing for various practices to be implemented by individuals and companies alike, in order to prevent pollution and promote social and ecological sustainability.
Section 18 of the Act deals with what has been coined as ‘Extended Producer Responsibility’.
Essentially, this term means that a producer is now responsible for what happens to the packaging of its products after the consumer has bought and used those products, otherwise known as the ‘post-consumer stage’.
On the back of section 18, as well as section 69 of the Act, The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (the Department) introduced a new set of Regulations (the Regulations), which were subsequently amended in 2021, detailing the extended responsibilities that have been imposed on producers regarding the packaging of their products.
The Regulations apply to a variety of product packaging. These classes of products include paper and packaging material, single use compostable plastic packaging, single use plastic products, single use biodegradable products, glass packaging, and metal packaging. In a nutshell, pretty much every kind of packaging material is included, except for shipping containers, timber or textiles, and plastic pallets or bulk containers exceeding 1000 litres.
The aim of the game
The purpose of introducing additional producer responsibilities is to encourage a circular economy. A circular economy aims to create a system that will significantly reduce waste by focusing on maintaining, repairing, recycling, re-using, or refurbishing product packaging. Therefore, the materials that package the products that we buy will not always be discarded, but rather repurposed or regenerated.
So, who needs to pay attention?
The Regulations define a ‘producer’ as any person or category of persons, including a brand owner, who is engaged in the commercial manufacture, conversion, refurbishment (where applicable) or import of new or used identified products as identified by the Minster by Notice in the Government
Gazette in terms of section 18(1) of the Act.
What do you need to do?
By definition in the Act, a producer is financially or physically responsible for implementing schemes and strategies that will effectively implement the obligations placed upon them by the Act and the Regulations. These schemes and strategies must be implemented in conjunction with waste collection organisations or waste pickers.
The following main steps must be taken by a producer in order to comply with the Regulations:
register as an identified producer with the Department;
curate and submit an Extended Producer Responsibility scheme to the Department within 6months from the date upon which the producer commenced business. Alternatively, aproducer can join an organisation running an existing scheme within 3 months from the date upon which they commenced business.
Producers who join an organisation will have to make payment of a fee, prescribed by the organisation. The organisation itself will have to submit both interim and annual performance reports to the Department, which will be measured against the waste reduction targets set out in the Regulations. A producer who establishes its own scheme must similarly submit both interim and annual performance reports to the Department. These submitted reports must show the quantity of waste that has been either exported, collected, diverted from landfill, or replaced on the market.
In the era of climate consciousness, companies are ethically responsible for reducing their carbon footprint, the aforementioned legislation is certainly a step in the right direction.
Jessica Strydom
