About the Council

Defining Product Stewardship

Product stewardship is an environmental management strategy that means whoever designs, produces, sells, or uses a product takes responsibility for minimizing the product’s environmental impact throughout all stages of the products’ life cycle.

Framework Principles for Product Stewardship Policy

The following principles are intended to guide development of product stewardship policies and legislation that governs multiple products. It is primarily aimed at state legislation but is also intended as a guide for local and federal policy. Download the principles. Learn about other US product stewardship framework policies and legislation.

1. Producer Responsibility
1. All producers selling a covered product into the State are responsible for designing managing, and financing a stewardship program that addresses the lifecycle impacts of their products including end-of-life management.
2. Producers have flexibility to meet these responsibilities by offering their own plan or participating in a plan with others.
3. In addressing end-of-life management, all stewardship programs must finance the collection, transportation, and responsible reuse, recycling or disposition of covered products. Stewardship programs must:
• Cover the costs of new, historic and orphan covered products.
• Provide convenient collection for consumers throughout the State.
4. Costs for product waste management are shifted from taxpayers and ratepayers to producers and users.
5. Programs are operated by producers with minimum government involvement.


2. Shared Responsibilities
1. Retailers only sell covered products from producers who are in compliance with stewardship requirements.
2. State and local governments work with producers and retailers on educating the public about the stewardship programs.
3. Consumers are responsible for using return systems set up by producers or their agents.


3. Governance
1. Government sets goals and performance standards following consultation with stakeholders. All programs within a product category are accountable to the same goals and performance standards.
2. Government allows producers the flexibility to determine the most cost-effective means of achieving the goals and performance standards.
3. Government is responsible for ensuring a level playing field by enforcing requirements that all producers in a product category participate in a stewardship program as a condition for selling their product in the jurisdiction.
4. Product categories required to have stewardship programs are selected using the process and priorities set out in framework legislation.
5. Government is responsible for ensuring transparency and accountability of stewardship programs. Producers are accountable to both government and consumers for disclosing environmental outcomes.


4. Financing
1. Producers finance their stewardship programs as a general cost of doing business, through cost internalization or by recovering costs through arrangements with their distributors and retailers. End of life fees are not allowed.


5. Environmental Protection
1. Framework legislation should address environmental product design, including source reduction, recyclability and reducing toxicity of covered products.
2. Framework legislation requires that stewardship programs ensure that all products covered by the stewardship program are managed in an environmentally sound manner.
3. Stewardship programs must be consistent with other State sustainability legislation, including those that address greenhouse gas reduction and the waste management hierarchy.
4. Stewardship programs include reporting on the final disposition, (i.e., reuse, recycling, disposal) of products handled by the stewardship program, including any products or materials exported for processing.

Why Product Stewardship?

It is in the best interest of states, local governments, industries, environmental groups, and consumers to reduce the adverse health and environmental impacts of consumer products. To achieve this result, product stewardship efforts aim to encourage manufacturers and others influencing the life cycle of a product to take increasing responsibility to reduce the impacts of that product - energy and materials consumption, air and water emissions, the amount of toxic materials used to create the product, worker safety, and waste disposal - in product design and in the end-of-life management of the products produced.

There are four primary reasons for instituting product stewardship policies:

• recapturing lost resources
• reducing the amount of garbage
• reducing waste management costs to government and ratepayers
• reducing potential harm from toxic material exposure

Is Anyone Doing Product Stewardship?

Many other countries are using product stewardship strategies to encourage environmental considerations in product design and to shift the costs of managing products at end-of-life to manufacturers. In fact, the Northwest Product Stewardship Council and similar organizations have inspired the formation of product stewardship councils in other areas such as the Ontario Zero Waste Coalition in Canada.

Sweden and Norway have enacted manufacturer responsibility laws for electronic products that require manufacturers to be responsible for products at the end-of-life. The Government of British Columbia, Canada has proven to be an international leader in establishing regulatory frameworks that result in industry-run, third party organizations for specific target products. The British Columbia Industry Product Stewardship Business Plan is now available for viewing from the ministry website. Their new business plan is a great reference for anyone involved in developing new product stewardship plans.

Product Stewardship Practices

Product stewardship can be incorporated into production processes in many ways including:

Materials management
Producers can reduce environmental impacts by using materials that result in the least environmental impacts. Examples include:

• Use of renewable materials that are replenished rapidly through solar energy
• Use of biodegradable materials that break down into soil without any harmful chemicals or materials entering the ecosystem
• Use of recycled and/or recyclable materials
• Use of low or no toxicity materials that emit, contain, or produce low levels (or zero levels) of chemicals that are hazardous to human health
• Use of sustainable harvesting methods so that the long term viability of the resource is not jeopardized

Product As Service (product leasing)
In many cases, consumers are not interested in the owning a product, but need the product because it enables them to get a service. For example, consumers usually don’t want to own the plastics and glass in a television set, rather they want the service, viewing of TV programs, that the television set provides. Manufacturers that lease their products to consumers have a much better incentive to design durable, upgradeable products.

Dematerialization
Dematerialization means taking materials out of products but still getting the same, or better, performance. Companies dematerialize by substituting intelligence and creativity for materials, by restructuring their products, or resizing the product.

Resource Conservation
Companies can save money as well as the environment by adopting practices that reduce waste, prevent pollution, preserve the climate and conserve habitat.

Product Take-Back
Some manufacturers are taking their old products back when consumers are finished with them. By taking products back, manufacturers can acquire low cost feedstock for manufacturing, or remanufacture parts for re-use.

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