The government will postpone one of the stages of garbage reform

The reform of producer responsibility for the disposal of goods and packaging, slated for early 2022, has been postponed for at least a few months. Business opposed the tightening of requirements, and there were disagreements among the departments.

The start of the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) reform, involving the disposal of goods and packaging or the payment of an environmental fee, will be delayed.

The bill regulating the reform, which has caused discontent among business and several ministries, will be considered during the spring session of the State Duma in 2022, Deputy Prime Minister Victoria Abramchenko said in response to a question from RBC. Thus, the new requirements, including 100% packaging recycling, from January 1, as originally planned, will not work. But Abramchenko promised to do everything to speed up the consideration of the document.

Why ROP is needed

The Extended Producer Responsibility Mechanism has been applied in Russia since 2015, but most of the business does not use it. Reporting on the disposal of goods or packaging under the EPR in 2020 was submitted by only 20 thousand companies out of about 4 million, follows from the data of Rosprirodnadzor. In total, about 4 billion rubles were collected during the year.

The money from the eco-collection should go to the creation of waste disposal infrastructure. The Ministry of Natural Resources previously predicted that after the implementation of the reform, the ecological collection could grow to 136 billion rubles. a year, and the head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov said that the industry would receive about 100 billion rubles in the form of ecological collection. annually.

Why the reform was postponed

To launch the reform of the ROP, the Ministry of Natural Resources prepared amendments to the law "On production and consumption waste" and to Art. 8 of the Law "On the Basics of State Regulation of Trade Activities". But in August 2021, the Ministry of Economic Development submitted comments on these amendments. Then the department called the start date of the reform (January 1, 2022) "unrealizable" and proposed to provide for a phased transition period for new rules for the disposal of goods and packaging lasting at least two years, taking into account the "objective assessment of the feasibility factor." The Ministry of Agriculture, having considered the comments of business, advocated the postponement of the reform until 2025. The Ministry of Industry and Trade also did not agree on the bill, said its deputy head Viktor Yevtukhov.

Among the main remarks of the business and the three ministries is the characterization of the requirement for 100% recycling of packaging as unfeasible. The entrepreneurs asked for time to create an infrastructure for waste processing, so that they could use the right to self-dispose of goods and packaging. Representatives of business associations also warned of the risk of rising prices and a shortage of goods in stores due to the need to enter information about them into the new Unified State Information System for accounting for waste from the use of goods (its creation is provided for by a bill from the Ministry of Natural Resources).

Source: RBC.