Extended producer responsibility (EPR)
EPR: principle of operation
Pursuant to the Waste Act No. 79/2015 Coll. each producer placing on the market the packaging and non-packaging products reserved by the law is obliged to take care of the given products during all phases of their life cycle, from production, their introduction to the market, through consumption, to ecological recovery at the end of their lifespan.
In particular, due to the simplification and financial availability of the fulfillment of the mentioned obligations for all categories of producers, each producer can fulfill these obligations through a selected authorized Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO). NATUR-PACK, a. s. is one of the producer responsibility organizations.
Individual entities in the EPR system
Producer
Producer of reserved products is each entity which the reserved:
- packaging:
- produces and places on the SR market
- fills or packs its products and goods and places them on the SR market
- imports and places on the SR market, including packagign containing another products
- non-packagign products:
- prodces and placxes on the SR market
- imports and places on the SR market
Producer responsibility organization (PRO)
Producer responsibility organization (PRO) is an authorized entity established by the producers that ensures for the producers fulfillment of the reserved obligations by operation and financing of handling with the reserved waste streams from the municipalities. The reserved waste streams means the individual components of separately collected municipal waste.
Municipality
Based on the contract with a PRO each municipality has secured the collection of the individual separated components of the municipal waste.
Collection company
Collection company ensures a complex technical manipulation with the separated components of municipal waste – collection, separation, compaction and other related activities.
Separated and processed types of waste will be individually taken from the collection company by recycling – processing company for recovery.
All costs of the collection company resulting from the above activities are financed by the PRO on the basis of mutual agreement with the collection company.
Recycler (processing company)
Recycler (processing company) is an entity which produces raw materials for manufacture of a new product or manufacture a new product itself from the received pre-processed waste.
How it simply works in practice.
Your clients and consumers will buy a product in a packaging. After unpacking of a product, they will throw packaging or non-packaging product over its lifespan into the color differentiated containers or bags intended for collection of separated waste in their municipality.
Each municipality has its own precisely defined rules for separated collection of municipal waste (type and size of containers or bags). A collection company will transport the separated waste to its facilities.
The separated waste components are sorted out in a sorting line and according to their composition they are pressed into bales (paper, plastics, composites, metal packaging) or stored in a high-volume containers (glass, metals).
Commodities prepared in this way are transported by trucks or containers or railway wagons to recyclers - processors.
Processing facilities are able to manufacture from your broken glass cup e.g. a brand new bottle, or from an exercise schoolbook new toilet tissue, from a PET bottle flakes for the production of new PET bottles, or from a beer cane e.g. new aluminum window sun-blinds.