Research On Extended Producer Responsibility Regime

The content of the Extended Producer Responsibility of producer should be defined according to its purpose.In order to reduce the product’s environmental impacts,the responsibility of the producer extends from the production to all links of the product life cycle,including product ecological design,using recycled materials,clean production and recycling and disposing waste products.By using the principle of the EPR,the internalization of the negative externalities related to products has been realized and the allocation of responsibilities for product life-cycle management can be achieved.EPR regime usually use administrative instruments and economic instruments to regulate.At present,the study on the improvement of the EPR regime in China is mainly manifested in determining contents of compulsory responsibility that the producer should bear.It attempts to use the command-control administrative instruments to implement the regime.However,according to the legislation and practice of the EPR regime in China,the command-control administrative instruments have limitations,because it is difficult to achieve the effect of integrating economic interests and environmental interests and the provide incentives for producer to conduct ecological product design.The economic instruments can change the cost-effectiveness of producer’s behaviors,make the producer take on the extended responsibilities actively,and foster the recycling market.The main economic instruments of the EPR regime include financial subsidies,advanced disposal fees and deposit-refund systems,which have been applied to varying degrees in China.Since the current legislation is not made for the purpose of incentivizing producers to take on extended responsibilities,the existing relevant legislation has problems such as decentralization and deficiency.From the current pilot practice of various product,there have been problems of poor implementation of economic instruments and inconsistency with command-control administrative instruments.The improvement of the economic instruments for the EPR regime should realize the coordination with command-control administrative instruments and the goal of incentivizing producers to take on extended responsibilities,especially the responsibility for improving product ecological design at the source.