What can product stewardship do?
There are no ‘standard’ product stewardship schemes. Schemes, particularly voluntary ones, cover a huge variety of initiatives and objectives.
Product stewardship is used because of its flexibility, efficiency and effectiveness in managing waste minimisation.
Product stewardship schemes use many tools to achieve their purpose and are often closely tied to the businesses involved in the product life cycle. This allows them to quickly and dynamically adjust to the best way of solving the problem at the time.
Product stewardship involves examining the entire life cycle of a product, over multiple stakeholders, to look for opportunities to reduce the product’s environmental impact. This means the solutions chosen are at the most efficient point to intervene.
Product stewardship involves those who know the most about the product – the businesses who make and sell it – in designing the solution.
How do we use product stewardship?
Product stewardship uses cooperation and communication to ensure a balanced solution, for purchasers, users, business and the environment, is chosen and that it is implemented effectively.
- Product stewardship schemes allow all stakeholders a chance to work together to ensure the product has minimal environmental impact, each using their position in the supply chain, their specialist knowledge, or their infrastructure to provide the best solution.
- The cooperation can occur within businesses, and between businesses such as manufacturers, distributors, retailers, service personnel, users, recyclers and government.
Product stewardship uses the design and manufacturing process to allow the most efficient solutions to be implemented. It supports:
- designing the problem out (eg, removing toxic materials) rather than being forced to deal with it at the end
- allowing decisions to be made as to the total cost of a product over its life cycle, for example:
- the use of a component that costs a few cents more can reduce the cost of recycling the product by a dollar
- trade-offs between having a product that uses less electricity or one that is more recyclable.
Product stewardship uses product price to allow consumers to make informed decisions, such as:
- internalising unavoidable environmental costs within the product price
- reflecting the costs of managing disposal of the product at the end of its life in the price.
What are the potential benefits of product stewardship?
| The benefits to… | are that product stewardship can… |
|---|---|
| business |
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| purchasers and users |
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| the environment |
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Notes:
- These lists provide examples of what product stewardship can do but don’t try to include every possibility.
- The Act cannot predetermine the bottom line or added value as a result of product stewardship schemes. Only purchasers, users and businesses themselves will be able to do that.
Beyond waste minimisation
Although the Act is focused on waste minimisation, the benefits of product stewardship are not limited to waste minimisation, or even the environment. A scheme can do more than what is specified under the Act.
Examples
A scheme could work to:
- reduce the waste produced during manufacture
- reduce the carbon footprint of a product
- ensure best practice employment practices during manufacture
- harmonise best practice labelling for consumer information.
The Additional information section provides a list of Ministry web pages relevant to product stewardship. These web pages provide links to current product stewardship resources that can help you design and establish your scheme.
The Appendix suggests some useful frameworks a business can use to plan its product stewardship scheme.
