03/06/2024
Breaking Down Extended Producer Responsibility.
Over view.
How is the Sustainable Waste Management Act 2022, beneficial to the Waste Actors in the Value Chain, and How the Actors can be of critical role in it, as the main Beneficiaries.
For years, Waste Management has been a critical part in keeping our environment clean, as well as creating a form of employment for the actors. As informal as it may be, waste management has created employment for hundreds of thousands of waste actors, from Waste pickers, Private Collectors, Transporters, Aggregators and Recyclers.
At any given level, households, businesses, industries, and public spaces produce waste, which needs proper collection and hence the need to engage waste services providers in the process. The providers don't work in isolation, they have the assistance of waste pickers, consisting of men and women who provide labour. The waste generated is generally made up of 65% organic waste and 35% recyclable materials.
With a growing market for recyclables, the waste pickers have had roles in sorting and selling the materials to aggregators, who may add value to the materials and sell to Recyclers. For years, this value chain has existed both formally and informally, creating a market and a pricing structure, that has been beneficial to the actors in the chain.
Statistics from UN-Habitat, through the Waste wise Cities Tool (WaCT), indicate that less than 60% of waste is collected in cities. The rest ends up in illegal dumpsites, drainages, rivers and large water bodies.
To increase the general collection of waste, and improve on the nature of the value chain, the SWA2022, looks to manage this by introducing the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).
EPR ensures that all Producers are responsible for all materials that they introduce, whether locally or through importation, by providing incentivizes to the value chain.
The purpose of the incentive is to boost collection and recovery of waste streams at post consumer level.
How does EPR Work.
The SWA2022 in its intended purpose, is to have 100% collection of waste, enhance the circular economy in Waste, to achieve zero waste.
Various clauses in the act, encourage the compulsory subscribtion by entities (households,business and industries) to waste collection services.
It attempts to make producers of waste products responsible for their waste within the circular economy.
While it maybe difficult for a producer or a group of producers to follow through from production to post consumer on their products, the law introduces the use of Producer Responsibility Organizations (PROs) to assist the producers in the overall management of this.
The PROs register the producers, and collect registration and incentives fees, which should be enough, to provide incentives to the actors in the value chain to boost recovery, collection, and disposal of waste.
The producers also engage the services of collection Agents, these are groups of Private service providers located all over the 47 counties, who recover the waste streams at post consumer level.
The agents do the collection, sorting, transportation, value addition, Incineration and disposal at landfill of problematic materials.
Within the agents, there are the various players in the value chain - waste pickers, private collectors, aggregators, transporters, and recyclers.
A model to incentivize the value chain through the PROs, paying the agents for volumes recovered on behalf of producers.
The agents in this case, will recover and keep data of all waste streams within the value chain for proper incentives. A lucrative incentives scheme will automatically encourage more collections and reduce to the point of creating circularity of the materials from being a hazard to the environment.
Sustainability and Benefits to the Value Chain Players.
Through the inclusion and harmonizing the collection and incentives process, the model paves way for direct compensation to the value chain players involved. The PROs in their mandate, should provide a transparent payment plan to the actors in the chain. The actors in return, need to be aggressive in recovery and accountable in the volumes recovered. The model formalizes an already existing chain of trade between Waste Actors, transporters, Aggregators, land fills operators and now a soon to be a popular way of getting rid of problematic waste, Incineration.
For sustainability, already existing groups for waste actors, using their linkages can reach out to their membership for sensitisation, inclusion and provide a building block, to the value chain.
A waste picker in this instance, gets compensation for the volumes they recover, over and above the trade they conduct, by selling the materials they recover.
A Transporter of waste, gets compensation for the materials they transport to aggregators, Recyclers, incinerators or landfill, over and above the transport revenue they generate.
Private Waste Services get compensation, for the general recovery of the materials, over and above the collection fees they charge.
There is need and room for mass sensitisation of communities towards this goal, to achieve the optimum results in the journey towards zero waste and a circular economy in Waste.
For many years, waste has been a very informal sector, with a very big potential. SWA2022, looks to boost and capitalise on these opportunities, to make the industry competitive enough, to see it's full potential.
It's upon the players in the circular economy, to embrace and make a reality, of the opportunities that the EPR presents.
Martin Deporres Odera,
Secretary, Kisumu Waste Actors Network Association
Kisumu county environment water climate change and natural resources
Kisumu Waste Pickers Welfare Association_kiwapwa
Nyalenda Amazing Grace Youth Group
Kamakowa Jam Taka CBO
M-Taka
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