PoVeRE: a tool to calculate sustainable fees for packaging waste producers

Producer fee (or tax/subsidy fee) is an economic instrument of the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme that has been used mostly for supporting financially the system but can also contribute to improve packaging design, and consequently reduce end-of-life impacts of packaging. Although differentiated fees have been applied in some systems, their efficiency in promoting sustainable packaging has not been clear or proved and most constituent packaging features (applied to differentiate the tax) only reflect economic concerns. To fulfil this gap the purpose of this study is to develop a decision support tool to determine differentiated producer fees for packaging waste, which ensures promoting better packaging, while considering economic, environmental and social impacts. The tool considers three main aspects (criteria): environmental impacts, calculated from life cycle assessment; economic impacts from EPR financial balance; and social impacts related to environmental education. All the criteria and sub-criteria are combined in a multi-criteria decision making model that allows assessing which criteria are more or less important for EPR producers. Further, the tool allows packaging producers or importers to simulate different packaging solutions to understand which changes could be made to improve its packaging and, therefore, pay less fee.