There are many products in our day-to-day life that cannot be reused and do not have an easy recyclable or compostable option after you have used that product up. What do you do with those products at home? While CVSan does have Recycles Day twice a year for a number of things, the answer quite often for what to do most days isn’t an easy one. With that there is a growing industry, that aims to help solve this problem and to “take it back,” called product stewardship or extended producer responsibility (EPR).
Product stewardship aims to have producers of products take more of the responsibility for what they make and what happens to it once its useful life is up. After all, why should you – the purchaser of the product – have to figure out what to do with the product if it cannot go in our curbside carts for pickup? Why should you have to pay extra to dispose of the product correctly and safely for the environment?
Things like carpet, fluorescent bulbs, gas cylinders, mattresses, paint, pharmaceuticals, sharps (needles), solar panels, textiles, thermostats and more are just some of the things that the California Product Stewardship Council is working on better “take back” solutions for in California and beyond. Often times legislation is needed to put effective programs into place that are monitored by government agencies protecting public and environmental health. Californians Against Waste is another great agency working on this issue from the advocacy side of things. Some local business are also helping out by taking back certain products like polystyrene packaging and metal clothes hangers. Others are participating in take back programs that are funded by EPR or other bills.
Check out resources on take-back programs with the following web pages we’ve developed to help you “take it back”:
What’s Beyond Taking it Back?
While composting and recycling products at the end of their useful life is good, they’re not at the top of the 4Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rot) hierarchy. The more sustainable and long-term solution would be to design products to reduce waste from the start. To design things so that the end of life is in mind and design so that the product could be repurposed in some way at the end of its useful life. Companies like Oakland-based Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute are working on this.
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