Society faces the challenge of adopting solutions to reduce the increasing generation of waste and its polluting effects on the environment and on human health.

To this end, the European Commission approved the Circular Economy Package, which includes Directive (EU) 2018/851 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2018 amending Directive 2008/98/EC on waste, which has been transposed by Law 7/2022 of 8 April, on waste and contaminated soils for a circular economy (LRSCEC), which also transposes another relevant environmental Directive, 2019/904 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 June 2019 on reducing the impact of certain plastic products on the environment.

This Law sets up a new Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regime, understood as a set of measures adopted to ensure that product producers assume financial responsibility or financial and organisational responsibility for the management of the waste phase of a product’s life cycle. In other words, the new rules oblige the producers of the products whose waste was previously managed by the waste producers to assume responsibility for it.

With regard to the fulfilment of EPR obligations, a distinction can be made between obligations that the producer has to fulfil itself individually and obligations that it will fulfil through extended producer responsibility systems (EPRS), mainly the financing/organisation obligations for the management of each waste stream. In turn, EPRS can be of two types:

• • Extended Producer Responsibility Individual Systems (EPRIS)
  • Extended Producer Responsibility Collective Systems (EPRCS), which enable several producers to fulfil their obligations by setting up an association or any other entity with its own legal personality, on a non-profit basis, to which they adhere.

In addition to developing a basic legal regime, generally applicable to all EPR systems, specific rules for each waste stream must be established by regulation. This is the case of the recent approval of Royal Decree 1055/2022 of 27 December on packaging and packaging waste, which extends EPR, initially enforceable for household packaging, to all packaging, including commercial and industrial packaging.

Similarly, other waste streams already subject to EPR will have to be brought into conformity with the new law within one year of its entry into force:

• • Royal Decree 110/2015, of 20 February, on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE).
  • Royal Decree 106/2008 of 1 February on batteries and accumulators and the environmental management of their waste.
  • Royal Decree 1619/2005, of 30 of December on the management of end-of-life tyres.
  • Royal Decree 679/2006 of 2 June 2006 regulating the management of used industrial oils.

Finally, it is worth highlighting the waste streams that the new law subjects to EPR and which are pending regulatory implementation, including the following products:

• • Textiles, furniture and furnishings, and non-packaging agricultural plastics.
  • Single-use plastics, fishing gear and wet wipes.
  • Filter tobacco products, and filters marketed for use in combination with tobacco products.
  • Lightweight bags, packages and wrappings made of flexible material containing food intended for immediate consumption in the wrapper or package itself without any further preparation and containers for foods.

Thus, over a period of a few years, new obligations will be generated for companies, which will have to carry out numerous actions outside their normal activity, with the costs and expenses that this entails. Many sectors have even decided to anticipate compliance with EPR by implementing it voluntarily (e.g. the textile and footwear, coffee capsule sectors).

In short, EPR can be considered a success story and we are witnessing its definitive consolidation and growth, both in qualitative terms – new waste streams to which it is extended, new obligations – and quantitative terms – increasing costs and higher prices of existing obligations-.