Product Stewardship //
Which product stewardship schemes are effective? Not many. Paint product stewardship is an example of a voluntary scheme that works well. Image: RymanStudio/ shutterstock.com
By Mike Ritchie THE Evaluating Product Stewardship benefits and effectiveness – Summary Report, May 2023 (Institute for Sustainable Futures; ISF) fails to reveal many of the systemic problems suffered by Product Stewardship (PS) schemes in Australia. As such the report could be accused of “greenwashing product stewardship” and that would serve no-one’s interest. While trying to be fair to ISF and the significant body of work it has put together, its conclusions don’t seem to reflect its own data. This article tries to provide a realistic peer review of the report and what is working and not working regarding Product Stewardship in Australia. It is directed towards the Commonwealth Government, which commissioned the original review. In short, product stewardship schemes are nowhere near as effective as the 288 page ISF report concludes. Apart from a couple of successful 28 INSIDEWASTE JUNE/JULY 2024
schemes, most are: a) f ailing to measure their effectiveness; b) f ailing to report their effectiveness; and/or c) f ailing to achieve their primary goal of diverting materials from landfill for reuse or recovery. I am a big supporter of well-run product stewardship schemes because they can be very effective mechanisms for capturing specific materials back into the productive economy. For example, the various Container Deposit Schemes (CDS) have a current capture rate of more than 70 per cent and growing. They report their data and have effective governance arrangements. They could do even more heavy lifting with the right policy settings. Unfortunately, that is not true of many product stewardship schemes in Australia. But before I go there, let me describe what the report did well. The report: • identified 106 separate schemes, most of which are voluntary and small scale; • summarised the benefits of well-run
product stewardship schemes; • d efined different types of schemes; • r eviewed public engagement data; and • s et up a matrix of assessment of the “effectiveness” of product stewardship schemes across 33 different metrics. And this last metric is the source of my criticism. The report allows schemes to decide which of 33 different metrics they want to report and evaluate their “effectiveness”, against. In short, it allowed schemes to “mark their own homework”. ISF defined “effectiveness” as meeting the goals as set out by each scheme. So, if achieving brand recognition, community knowledge or number of visits to a web site was set as a goal, then a scheme could score well for ‘effectiveness’ even if it was recovering a tiny percentage of materials being Placed On Market (POM). In my view, the report authors have confused “effectiveness” with “indicators of participation” (brand recognition, brand support, participation,
number of collection points etc.) and scored accordingly, even if the scheme is ineffective from a resource recovery perspective. The report actually identifies this weakness: “.. there was limited data to assess the effectiveness of product stewardship initiatives (i.e. performance in meeting objectives)” (p17). “For example, tonnes of waste products collected for recovery and materials recovered were not always reported in the context of total waste arising. Without this data it is difficult to determine how effective the initiative has been in increasing recovery or diverting waste from landfill.” (p17) Surely that is the whole point of product stewardship schemes. Product stewardship is not cheap, so we need to be sure schemes are being effective. Don’t be fooled. We all pay for product stewardship through the pricing we pay for goods. This means effectiveness is important to our hip pockets. Here are some of the report’s conclusions:
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