Product Stewardship

1. Product Stewardship 2008 Symposium on Innovating for Sustainable Results Scott Cassel, PSI Executive Director/Founder January 8, 2007

2. What is Product Stewardship? “Product Stewardship" is a principle that directs all those involved in the life cycle of a product to take shared responsibility for reducing the health and environmental impacts that result from the production, use, and end-of-life management of the product.

3. Product Stewardship Goals • Make Better Products • Source reduction (weight/volume) • Decrease materials use • Reduce toxics/risk • Increase energy efficiency (production/use) • Increase recycled content • Increase purchase of env’lly preferable products • Increase recovery, reuse, and recycling • Sustainable financing

4. What’s the Problem? “Industry unfunded mandate” “Government subsidy of business”

5. What’s the Solution? • Internalize end of life mgt costs into product purchase price • Shift Costs from Taxpayers to Consumers • “Internalize externalities” – life cycle • Allow true “green” products to compete on level playing field

6. What’s the Solution? Give manufacturers: • Responsibility to manage their own products at end of life. • Financial incentive to reduce waste by making them pay to manage it. • Allow them to pass costs to consumers. • Allow management flexibility/control.

7. Product Stewardship and DfE • No direct evidence yet that PS results in DfE. • WEEE needed RoHS as design driver. • Likely that multiple systems will be needed. • Producer responsibility likely to result in R&D for less toxic alternatives.

8. What is the Product Stewardship Institute? • Non-Profit, based in Boston, founded in 2000 • Membership • 43 State members • 50 Local agency members • Board of Directors: 7 states, 4 local agencies • Multi-stakeholder product stewardship network • Adjunct Council: Business, Environmental/Organizational

9. PSI Full and Affiliate State Members

10. Why was the Product Stewardship Institute Created? • Unified voice: State and Local Governments • Fiscal relief for government on waste issues • Objective data for decision-making • Forum for collaboration with industry • Nationally coordinated systems/harmonized regulations

11. Paint Mercury Thermostats Fluorescent lamps Electronics Pharmaceuticals Radioactive Devices Telephone books Gas Cylinders Tires Beverage containers Motor oil PSI Projects

12. Action Plan Dialogue meetings  Agreements Projects & Initiatives PSI Dialogue Process

13. Paint – Key Dates • Sept. 2002 – PSI presentation to NPCA • March 15, 2005 – 1st MOU (2 years) • Nov. 1, 2007 – 2nd MOU (3 years) • July 1, 2008 – Start of industry-funded Demonstration Project in Minnesota • July 2009 – Roll-out to other states begins

14. 1st Paint MOU Project Portfolio • Source Reduction Survey/Pilot • Reuse Manual/Pilot • Infrastructure Report • Recycled Paint Standard (Green Seal) • Recycled Paint Marketing • Recycled Paint Regulatory Issues – White Paper • Sustainable Financing Options • Lifecycle Assessment and Cost/Benefit Analysis (LCA/CBA)

15. Who Said This? • “We are surrounded by things of whose nature and origin we know nothing…We do not know how bread is made, how cloth is woven, how a table is manufactured, how glass is made. We consume, as we produce, without any concrete relatedness to the objects with which we deal; we live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.”

16. Erich Fromm The Sane Society 1955

17. For More Information Contact… Scott Cassel PSI Executive Director/Founder 617-236-4855 scott@productstewardship.us www.productstewardship.us