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SMM Web Academy - The Case for Product Stewardship
The Case for Product Stewardship
Interest in product stewardship is growing as waste managers look at a complex waste stream that poses a challenge to manage both in volume and cost, and producers see their new products as part of their future material supply chain. Join us to hear how local governments and companies are applying the principles of product stewardship to change cost structures, and reduce their environmental foot print.
Why product stewardship?
- In times of reduced public funding for waste management, and increasing demands for that funding from other programs, product stewardship can better align waste management costs and responsibilities between those that benefited from the use of a product rather than a society as a whole.
- Product stewardship, extended producer responsibility or extended product responsibility, can help internalize manly lifecycle costs for product users and producers. This can lead the way to products becoming more efficient in material and energy use in all aspects of the product, or service being provided.
- Many materials are beginning to be prohibited from landfills for reasons of volume, toxicity or other risks. Product stewardship is one way that the end-of-life management can be supported by those that benefited from the use of that product instead of the larger community that did not use that product.
- Many manufactures are seeing their current products as the raw materials for their next generation of products. Ideas like extended product responsibility will help to feed their supply chain, and smooth material supply and cost volatility.
Speaker Bios
- Leslie Wilson, Household Hazardous Waste Coordinator for the Department of Environmental Services, Carver County (MN) will speak about the need for product stewardship, and provide information on how it can be advantageous.
Product Stewardship & Local Government (PDF) (19 pp, 899K, About PDF)
- Bill Worrell, Manager , San Luis Obispo County Integrated Waste Management Authority (CA) will speak about how San Luis Obispo responded to state landfill bans for several common products by implementing take-back programs for these wastes at retailers that sell the products throughout the county.
Household Battery and Fluorescent Tube Retail Take-back (PDF) (30 pp, 962K, About PDF)
- Russell DeLozier, Manager, Mats Reclamation-Post-Consumer Carpet, Shaw Industries Group Inc. will talk about how Shaw Industries has used extended product responsibility to guide the design and end-of-life management of their products to make them the feedstock for their next generation of products.
The Case for Product Stewardship – A Shaw Perspective (PDF) (50 pp, 2.76K, About PDF)