Polluter pays principle
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The Polluter Pays Principle is a principle in environmental law where the polluting party pays for the damage done to the natural environment. It is regarded as a regional custom because of the strong support it has received in most Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and European Community (EC) countries. International environmental law itself, however, mentions little about the principle.
Polluter Pays is also known as Extended Polluter Responsibility (EPR). This is a concept that was probably first described by the Swedish Government in 1975. EPR seeks to shift the responsibility dealing with waste from governments to the entities producing it. In effect, it internalises the cost of waste disposal into the cost of the product, theoretically meaning that the producers will improve the waste profile of their products, thus decreasing waste and increasing possibilities for reuse and recycling.
OECD defines EPR as:
a concept where manufacturers and importers of products should bear a significant degree of responsibility for the environmental impacts of their products throughout the product life-cycle, including upstream impacts inherent in the selection of materials for the products, impacts from manufacturers’ production process itself, and downstream impacts from the use and disposal of the products. Producers accept their responsibility when designing their products to minimise life-cycle environmental impacts, and when accepting legal, physical or socio-economic responsibility for environmental impacts that cannot be eliminated by design.[1]
Ecotaxes (as the Gas Guzzler Tax) are promoted as a way to implement the polluter pays principle. There are also "polluter pays" fines, i.e. in US Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE).
[edit] References
- ^ OECD factsheet about EPR: http://www.oecd.org/document/53/0,3343,en_2649_34395_37284725_1_1_1_1,00.html
- International Law and Naval War: The Effect of Marine Safety and Pollution Conventions during International Armed Conflict, by Dr. Sonja Ann Jozef Boelaert-Suominen (December 2000). http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/npapers/np15/NewportPaperNo15.pdf
- Doswald-Beck, ICRC Review (1997), No. 316, 35–55; Greenwood, ibid., 65–75.
[edit] See also
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