Extended Producer Responsibility: what is it all about?

EPR plays a vital role in coordinating and convening elements of a circular economy for packaging. Many of the key challenges ahead fall within their scope: incentivising sustainable design, supporting investment and delivery of collection, sorting and recycling; as well as stimulating essential end markets.

CEFLEX and Packaging Europe are collaborating to explore these issues in a series of interviews and articles. Examining the potential pathways ahead and how CEFLEX, its stakeholders and beyond are working to facilitate them.

Mike Jefferson of CEFLEX spoke to Victoria Hattersley about why the ongoing development of EPR schemes is so important for achieving the goal of a circular economy – and what the implications are for the flexibles industry.

It includes work from CEFLEX looking at how EPR schemes can be best leveraged to meet circularity objectives for flexible packaging. This has culminated in a selected Criteria for Circularity (C4C), which looks at how EPR can operate to create optimal conditions to maximise the circularity of flexible packaging.