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the general waste stream, and consequently leads to high recycling rates. In Taipei the overall recycling rate of municipal solid waste has increased from 2% in 2000 to 57% in 2015, while the same in Seoul has increased from 21% in 1994 to 67% in 2014. The food waste management system in Seoul, in particular, is worth a closer look. Seoul implemented a policy in 2013 that provided residents with three options to manage their food waste. Residents could choose to drop their food waste in a special bin accessed through an RFID card, and the bin would weigh, record, and charge the resident accordingly. Alternatively, residents could buy pre-paid garbage bags to dispose off their food waste.
The food waste from these avenues would end up either as animal feed or converted into biogas. Yet another option is for the residents to put their food waste directly into a composting system through a barcode-based identifier that charges residents accordingly. All these measures have led Seoul to be able to save USD 600,000 a day that it used to spend on managing this food waste.
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policies have been used as an effective tool by countries such as Japan and Belgium to drive increased collection of material for recycling and therefore, reduce the amount of material sent to landfill. Both these countries have a track record of successful EPR programmes over the past two decades.
In Japan, the Packaging Recycling Act that was passed in 1995 mandated the creation of a system of source segregated collection by municipalities and recycling of the segregated materials by business operators. This led to the creation of the Japan Containers and Packaging Recycling Association (JCPRA). Companies that manufacture and sell products in packaging material were required to pay commissions each year to JCPRA. Each year, municipalities in Japan are required to estimate the total quantity of various packaging streams that will be collected. This report is then used to set annual targets for the total targeted tonnage of packaging that must be recycled through the JCPRA system.
01 Government-Certi ed trash bag collection in Taipei. Source: Wikimedia Commons
02 Recycling Bins in Japan. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Post-consumer packaging is segregated
at the household level, collected by municipalities and sent to recyclers. JCPRA uses its funds to pay a Recycling Cost to these recyclers depending on the types of materials recycled. For some materials, such as Aluminium cans, the market value of the material is sufficiently high at the recycling stage that once they are collected in a segregated manner, recyclers are willing to pick this up from the municipalities at no cost. For other materials such as paper or multilayered plastics, the recycling cost is used to cover any deficit faced by the recyclers. According to JCPRA, the recycling cost for PET bottles is at USD 0.02 /kg while the recycling cost for plastic packaging other than PET is at USD 0.40/kg for the year 2019.
Fost Plus was set up by the consumer goods and packaging industry in Belgium in the late 1990s to handle all household waste. The key objective of Fost Plus at the time of its creation was to find a solution for post-consumer plastic packaging to meet the legal recycling targets set by the Government at the lowest cost. Each municipality in Belgium could either handle their waste collection in-house or to tender it in the market to a private contractor. In either case, Fost Plus pays all operational costs to the entity doing the collection based on a series of negotiations.
This entity is then responsible for segregated collection throughout the municipality and selling the segregated materials to recyclers. All the money that is paid by the recyclers is subsequently paid to Fost Plus. In addition to this, producers who sell goods in packaging pay an annual fee to Fost Plus based on the tonnage and type of material they put into the market. Thus, Fost Plus has two sources of revenue— fees paid by the producers and the material value from the sale of segregated, recycled materials. This amounted to USD 193.7 million according to Fost Plus’ Annual Report released in 2017. However, the non-profit organisation had an operating expense of USD 217 million hence facing a profit loss in 2017.
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