Producers of environmentally friendly products should be rewarded - BEUC consumers
Product design needs to ensure that products are energy and resource efficient, reusable and recyclable. Individual producer responsibility for the waste their products generate will help accelerate this process.
Under the system proposed by the Council, producers will be collectively responsible for dealing with waste. Under this system producers who produce low waste "green" products will have to subsidise competitors who produce products that are less friendly to the environment". BEUC rejects collective responsibility as proposed by the Council. We urge MEPs to adopt individual responsibility, as it will:
- offer incentives individual companies to develop more environment-friendly designs
- discourage free-riding importers to place products on the market at a lower price, leaving the recycling and waste costs to the collective scheme
- help public authorities control compliance
We also ask MEPs to reject the introduction of a "visible fee". It would only add to the local taxes that consumers are already paying for their waste, and would discourage the development of innovative green design concepts.
"We urge MEPs to stick to their original decision in favour of individual producer responsibility. Good producers should be rewarded for their efforts", said Jim Murray, BEUC director.
BEUC, the European Consumers' Organisation, is the Brussels based federation of independent national consumer organisations from all the Member States of the EU and from other European countries. Our job is to try to influence, in the consumer interest, the development of EU policy and to promote and defend the interests of all European consumers.
