Extended Producer Responsibility: Plastic Waste Management Rules

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Extended Producer Responsibility: Plastic Waste Management Rules

Before defining the Plastic Waste Management Rules, as amended in 2022, let us understand what Extended Producer Responsibility is in India. The Meaning of Extended Producer Responsibility is an environmentally friendly initiative to delegate Electronic producers with the responsibility to extend their product post-consumer stage of its life cycle. The EPR portal offers an EPR registration certificate for Plastic disposition to ensure the shifting of the economic responsibility, fully or partially, towards the producers from the plant's respective municipalities.

For such adherence, the Producers receive incentives for considering environmental considerations while manufacturing their products.

EPR Plastic Waste Management Rules of 2022

The CPCB, or the Centre for Pollution Control Board, issued the amended EPR Plastic Waste Management rules in 2022. Some of its latest amendments are discussed in the following section for your reference. So, if you are interested in getting the EPR registration or preserving the certification, then you must abide by them.

1. Plastic Packaging Waste Collection System

Every Electronic Producer must fulfill their Extended Producer Responsibility obligations by developing a competent segregation infrastructure of plastic packaging waste. The segregation will be done based on the category of collected plastics. The EPR applicant can follow the implementation of the modality adopted by EPR Producers in the following ways:

• Establish plastic waste collection points
• Establish Material Recovery Facilities or the MRFs
• Collect plastic packaging waste from the collection points
• Collect from the proportionate area covered with frequency and as per its volume
• Offer plastic collection facilities from the following entities:
  • Urban Local Bodies
  • Gram Panchayats
  • Public Authorities
  • Third Parties carrying out E-waste Management
• Provide for Plastic collection from Entities that have used the offer
• Provide practical arrangements for plastic collection and transport
• Ensure the plastic packaging waste collected is subsequently subject to recycling

2. Networking of Plastic Packaging Collection points

The Electronic Producers must ensure the collection points network is designed by taking the following variables into account: 

• Population size
• Expected plastic waste volume
• Packaging Waste
• Network Point Accessibility 
• Vicinity to the end-disposers

The networking must not be restricted to the areas for collection and subsequent management where it is profitable. Also, the entities involved in the plastic waste collection must transfer the waste for recycling or other end uses.

What are the Voluntary Collection Points? 

These are the nooks from which the Plastic will be handed over to the Producers or a third-party agency for their treatment or end-use.

3. Fulfilling EPR registration Obligations

The Electronics Producers must provide the details of the recycling certificate from registered Plastic waste recyclers. They must also state the facts of the sent quantity for end-life disposal. Such a task must be accomplished before or on June 30 of the next financial year during annual returns filing on the online EPR portal.

The online EPR portal will cross-check the details provided by Electronics Producers. If a point of difference is found, the Agency will consider the lower figure for fulfilling the Extended Producer Responsibility obligation. The EPR certificates will be subjected to verification by any of the following authorities:

• Central Pollution Control Board or CPCB
• State Pollution Control Board or SPCB
• Pollution Control Committee

4. Centralized Online Portal

The Central Pollution Control Board is delegated to launch an online system for the EPR registration as well as for annual returns filing by Electronics Producers by March 31 2022.

The developed online system by CPCB must reflect the plastic packaging material introduced in the market Producers in a financial year, along with the audit report of the following:

• EPR-registered Producers
• EPR-registered Recyclers
• Other Plastic Packaging Waste Processors

Also, The State Pollution Control Board, as well as other Pollution Control Committees, are empowered to use the centralized portal developed under CPCB directives. The centralized Extended Producer Responsibility portal will act as the single point data repository for guidelines relating to Extended Producer Responsibility implementation for Plastic Packaging. It will be ubiquitously applicable to electronics producers' Plastic Waste Management Rule of 2016.

For more on such EPR plastic management rules of 2022, connect with one of our EPR experts at Registrationwala. 

Also read:  EPR Registration for Plastic Waste Management

                   Everything you know about EPR License in India

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