Recommendations for a Canadian Green Dot Program

By Andy Telfer

There is an artist's studio/storefront close to where I live called "Potters and Dotters." 'Dotters' is a pun on the word 'daughters'. As well as selling their wares, the owners also teach pottery to all ages, offering classes that range from almost purely social to very serious. Their products are packaged very simply in newsprint and used bags after being sold, accompanied by their business card.

This simple system is unusual in our world of prepackaged goods. Ours is a world where packaging is an important vehicle to market products and where packaging offers a plethora of "information" (fact or fiction). This small pottery business, where products are marketed by their merits alone, comes to mind when I think of the packaging system in Germany. While it may not have the simplicity of the pottery store, its principles are simple.

From my understanding of the system, consumers who purchase goods whose packaging is labelled with the Green Dot logo know the company has paid to have a third party look after its collection and management, whether or not the packaging is actually recyclable. In the case of Germany, manufacturers were mandated to take full responsibility for their packaging 10 years ago, and have two choices. They either pay into the Duales System Deustchland (DSD) and place a green dot on the label, which usually means the packaging ends up in the country's recycling program, or they take the material back at retail and look after it themselves (a deposit-return system, for example).

Sounds simple enough, from a consumer standpoint. And obviously brand-owners have some hurdles to jump and costs to bear. These types of programs, called extended producer responsibility (EPR), are driven by a growing public concern over the tremendous amount of waste going to landfills. As disposal costs increase, the public is becming very concerned with the high cost of disposing of someone else's marketing-oriented packaging. If a Canadian system means full responsibility, as opposed to a proposed 50% responsibility scenario, then the full cost of recovering the package should be internalized. It then will become clear how much the packaging adds to the cost of the product and a message will be sent to the consumer. The public is developing an increasing appetite to divert more and more material from landfills. We can satisfy this appetite to a great degree with a broader Canadian EPR program, provided return rates are better than existing recycling systems and there is therefore increased diversion of materials from landfills.

So how about a Canadian Green Dot? Canadian recycling coordinators and others in the industry are already familiar with the concept. And there is already talk of a Canadian Green Dot. My wish is that we adopt the concepts behind the European Packaging Directive: producer responsibility and enhanced packaging recovery. But the question remains of who pays how much? Fifteen European countries are already using the Green Dot symbol but their recovery rates vary, according to the collection system they use, and the level of producer responsibility varies, too. Germany appears to be one of the best models, at this point, with its combination of high recovery rates and full responsibility.

If we decide to have a national EPR program, who would be the "potters"? In other words, who would create and regulate the program? Ideally, in Canada, we could have a harmonized national program, regulated by the federal government. Who would create and operate this program? A national multi-stakeholder body. The best place for such a program to be administered would be through the Ecologo program/ Environment Canada, a non-partisan government body already responsible for placing environmental logos on product packaging. The contract could be awarded to a third party.

We have to trust industry to develop the most efficient system to handle the resulting regulated program. Those collectors may be municipalities or private sector.

Waste has never and still does not make sense. I believe that 20th and 21st century waste will one day be seen as a short-lived experiment. We are already witnessing increased pressures on natural resources and a growing disdain for dumps and landfill sites. We must therefore begin building systems to achieve the highest possible waste diversion for the planet's future well-being. A Canadian EPR system will finally be something positive we leave for our sons and dotters.

Published in the PPSR Review August 2001

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