Permits & registration
What is producer responsibility?
Producer responsibility places obligations on businesses that place products on the market to fund or arrange the recovery of those products when they become waste — packaging, electricals and batteries among them.
It shifts cost towards whoever designed and sold the product, on the reasoning that they are the party able to change what it is made of and how easily it can be recovered.
Obligations are usually triggered by thresholds of turnover or tonnage, so businesses grow into them, frequently without noticing. Registration deadlines follow the calendar rather than the growth.
The schemes have been significantly reformed in recent years, particularly for packaging, and the obligations, data requirements and fee structures have changed with them.
What goes wrong in practice
- Thresholds crossed without anyone checking whether obligations now apply.
- Data collected too late in the year to report accurately.
- Compliance assumed to be handled by a scheme without checking what the scheme actually covers.