Reducing and managing packaging waste was the focus as a national task group of the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment recently held consultations in Prince Edward Island.
The National Producer Extended Responsibility Workshop included representatives from environment departments across the country, as well as industry associations, municipalities and waste management agencies including the Island Waste Management Corporation.
Minister of Environment, Energy and Forestry Jamie Ballem first raised the issue of packaging with his counterparts at a Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment meeting. He asked that a future meeting include discussion on encouraging industry to use more recycled material in packaging and to reduce unnecessary packaging.
“Prince Edward Island has an excellent system in place to manage waste, with Waste Watch resulting in 65 per cent of materials being composted or recycled. However, we have to remember that the most environmentally-friendly waste management solution is to reduce the amount of waste produced in the first place. Reducing packaging is one way to do that,” said Minister Ballem.
The Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment established a national task group to look at packaging and the larger issue of extended producer responsibility. Don Jardine, a director with the PEI Department of Environment, Energy and Forestry, chairs the group. Extended producer responsibility is the idea that the producer takes responsibility for its product and packaging from cradle to grave – from the time the product is produced until after it is no longer in use. This shifts the onus away from the municipalities or provinces – and ultimately taxpayers – which currently pay the costs associated with proper disposal of most products when they’ve reached the end of their life cycle.
The national task group is putting guiding principles and definitions in place for extended producer responsibility (EPR) that would help provinces and territories develop EPR programs in keeping with a common national approach. The group is using the issue of packaging as the example to show how the concept of extended producer responsibility may be applied.
The workshop in Prince Edward Island was an opportunity to get input from industry and waste management organizations. It included presentations by Larry Dworkin of the Packaging Association of Canada and Dr. John Sinclair, a professor at the Natural Resources Institute at the University of Manitoba, who did a study on extended producer responsibility and packaging in Canada.
The task group is expected to report back to the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment in 2007 with recommendations on extended producer responsibility and packaging. Ministers will consider the report and decide how to proceed. The Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment is the major intergovernmental forum in Canada for discussion and joint action on environmental issues of national and international concern.