Extended Producer Responsibility for Durable Products

Abstract

We analyze the effect of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)-based take-back legislation on a durable good producer's secondary market strategy. We show that the effect of EPR and its associated environmental implications depend on product durability. In the absence of EPR, a producer chooses not to interfere with the secondary market for products with high durability. In this case, EPR provides producers with an incentive to interfere with the secondary market by recovering and prematurely recycling used products to meet EPR obligations. For low durability products, a producer readily interferes with the secondary market even in the absence of EPR, and the effect of EPR depends on its implementation parameters. We find that EPR increases the producer's secondary market interference when it imposes a high collection target and a low recycling standard. In contrast, EPR reduces secondary market interference when it imposes a low collection target or a sufficiently stringent recycling standard. These results, in turn, imply that EPR-based take-back legislation may have unintended consequences in a durable goods setting: It may diminish environmental goals such as reducing new production and increasing reuse levels, two key environmental goals with higher priority than increasing recycling. Our results offer insights for how the environmental benefits of EPR for durable products can be improved or the potential adverse effects can be overcome by appropriately choosing the implementation parameters.