EPR Partnerships

WWF has identified the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme as a critical policy tool with a track record in holding manufacturers accountable for the end-of-life impacts of their plastic products and packaging, as well as encouraging holistic eco-design in the business sector.
In this way, and by facilitating partnerships among various stakeholders and sharing best practices globally, our EPR project, is promoting and enhancing the adoption of EPR schemes, reducing plastic leakage into nature, and helping to deliver a circular economy. 

The Digital Watermarks Initiative HolyGrail 2.0 – facilitated by AIM, the European Brands Association, as the next iteration of the initial HolyGrail project under the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2016-2019) – is a pilot project with the objective to prove the viability of digital watermarking technologies for accurate sorting and consequently higher-quality recycling, as well as the business case at large scale. Digital watermarks are imperceptible codes, the size of a postage stamp, covering the surface of a consumer goods packaging and carrying a wide range of attributes. The aim is that once the packaging has entered into a waste sorting facility, the digital watermark can be detected and decoded by a standard high resolution camera on the sorting line, which then – based on the transferred attributes (e.g. food vs. non-food) – is able to sort the packaging in corresponding streams. This would result in better and more accurate sorting streams, thus consequently in higher-quality recyclates benefiting the complete packaging value chain. Under the auspices of AIM, the European Brands Association, more than 85 companies and organisations from the complete packaging value chain have joined forces with the ambitious goal to assess whether a pioneering digital technology can enable better sorting and higher-quality recycling rates for packaging in the EU, to drive a truly circular economy.

Close the Glass Loop is an industry action platform to unite the glass collection and recycling value chain, and to establish a material stewardship programme that will result in more bottle-to-bottle recycling. We want to achieve 90% average EU collection rate of used glass packaging by 2030 (that’s up from the current average of 76%) and better quality of recycled glass, so more recycled content can be used in a new production loop. CGL consists of a European platform of all interested stakeholders with several horizontal working groups completed by several national platforms where national action plans to increase the collection to 90% are developed and discussed. EXPRA is one of the founding members of Close the Glass Loop together with FEVE and FERVER, joined by industry associations like UNESDA, EFBW, breweries etc and Municipal Waste Europe, ACR+. 

The papers in the collection here delve into the theory behind EPR and describe numerous practical examples of various approaches that exist across the world and across product categories. They address many of the product categories covered by EPR systems in different parts of the world, including packaging and printed paper, paint, tyres, mattresses, and textiles. 

4evergreen is a cross-industry alliance, bringing together the entire fibre-based packaging value chain to achieve their common objective of raising the overall recycling rate of fibre-based packaging to 90% by 2030. The alliance will compile new guidelines for improved collection and sorting of all fibre-based packaging types, taking into account the important role of Extended Producer Responsibility schemes.