Reforming Extended Producer Responsibility to Promote Repair

The EU has recently adopted a number of regulations to facilitate the extended use of products as well as product repairs and reuse. However, these regulations fail to address a key obstacle to repairs: The costs. This is why we are calling for subsidised consumer repairs, financed by producer fees.

To achieve this, the Extended Producer Responsibility must be fundamentally reformed. Currently, manufacturers in Germany and many parts of the EU are held responsible for the ecological disposal of appliances, if at all, while public waste disposal organisations continue to bear the costs for the collection of e.g. disposed electrical appliances. The Extended Producer Responsibility does not cover additional costs in the waste hierarchy, including repairs. Manufacturers however have powerful levers to encourage or discourage repairs, long usage cycles, and the reuse of products, through, for example, product design, software updates, or spare parts supply. The reform of the Extended Producer Responsibility should therefore hold manufacturers responsible for these additional stages of the waste hierarchy.

In our paper with Runder Tisch Reparatur, the European Environmental Bureau, and Right to Repair Europe, we sketch an effective reform of the Extended Producer Responsibility that will promote product repairs in the EU and Germany.