Everything about Product Stewardship totally explained
Product stewardship is a concept whereby environmental protection centers around the product itself, and everyone involved in the lifespan of the product is called upon to take up responsibility to reduce its environmental impact. For manufacturers, this includes planning for, and if necessary, paying for the recycling or disposal of the product at the end of its useful life. This may be achieved, in part, by redesigning products to use fewer harmful substances, to be more durable, reuseable and recycleable, and to make products from recycled materials. For retailers and consumers, this means taking an active role in ensuring the proper disposal or recycling of an end-of-life product.
Those who advocate it are concerned with the later phases of
product lifecycle and the
comprehensive outcome of the whole production process. It is considered a pre-requisite to a strict
service economy interpretation of (fictional, national, legal) "commodity" and "product" relationships.
The most familiar example is the
container deposit charged for a
deposit bottle. One pays a fee to buy the bottle, separately from the fee to buy what it contains. If one returns the bottle, the fee is returned, and the supplier must return the bottle for re-use or
recycling. If not, one has paid the fee, and presumably this can pay for
landfill or
litter control measures that dispose of say a broken bottle. Also, since the same fee can be collected by anyone finding and returning the bottle, it's common for people to collect these and return them as a means of surviving. This is quite common for instance among
homeless people in
U.S. cities.
However, the principle is applied very broadly beyond bottles to
paint and
automobile parts such as
tires. When purchasing paint or tires in many places, one simultaneously pays for the disposal of the
toxic waste they become. In some countries, such as
Germany,
law requires attention to the
comprehensive outcome of the whole extraction, production, distribution, use and waste of a product, and holds those profiting from these legally responsible for any outcome along the way. This is also the trend in the
UK and
EU generally. In the
United States, predictably, the issue has been confronted via
class action lawsuits that attempt to hold companies
liable for the environmental impact of their products. Thus far, such as
litigation or proposed
accounting reforms such as
full cost accounting have not gained much traction for the product stewardship concept in the United States beyond the realm of
academe and corporate
public relations (derisively referred to as
greenwashing).
The
demand-side approach
ethical consumerism, supported by consumer education and information about environmental impacts, may approach some of the same outcomes as product stewardship.
Extended producer responsibility
Product Stewardship is often used interchangeably with
Extended producer responsibility, a similar concept. However, there are distinct differences between the two, as suggested by the semantics of the different terms used.
While both concepts bring the onus of waste management for end-of-life products from the government to the manufacturers, Product Stewardship further extends this responsibility to everyone involved in the life-cycle of the product. This includes not only the manufacturers, but also the retailers, consumers and recyclers as well.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Product Stewardship'.
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