Product Stewardship

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Product stewardship is when responsibility for the environmental effects that products cause in their life cycle is shared among all stakeholders involved with the product. Product stewardship participants can include producers, brand owners, importers, retailers, and consumers.

In 2018 the World Bank put New Zealand in 10th position for the most wasteful countries in the world, generating around 750kg per person per year.

Product stewardship is recognised globally as an effective tool to reduce waste. It allows you to work right across the whole supply chain and engage all stakeholders, with a common goal of driving change across the supply chain, minimising waste to landfill and increasing the circularity of resources.

There’s no formal definition between product stewardship and take back but generally it’s accepted that a stewardship programme takes greater responsibility for the product’s environmental impact than a take back scheme.

Product stewardship aims to work across the supply chain to ensure all negative aspects are addressed at every point, while a take back scheme generally focuses on just that – take back of the product at end of life.

Voluntary stewardship is just that – organisations, whether they are producers, importers or retailers, who choose to take responsibility for the environmental impact of their product.  A voluntary product stewardship scheme may ensure responsible disposal or recycling and encourage redesign of a product for reuse or increased recyclability.  These schemes can be industry-wide, a group of businesses or a driven by an individual business.

With regulated stewardship, the Government uses the tools in the Waste Minimisation Act 2008 to mandated participation in stewardship.  They may choose to do this where there is significant harm from the product at end of life or any voluntary stewardship scheme in place is not effective. Regulated stewardship creates a level playing field by mandating participation from all producers, importers and retailers.

3R works in both voluntary and regulated stewardship.

Under New Zealand’s Waste Minimisation Act 2008, products which are deemed to cause significant environmental harm when they become waste; have significant benefits from reduction, reuse, recycling, recovery, or treatment of the product; and can be effectively managed under a product stewardship scheme can be declared priority products. In 2020, six products were declared ‘priority products’ and it’s expected there will be more to follow.8. Following a declaration of priority product there is a requirement for those responsible for producing, importing and/or selling a product to be part of a regulated product stewardship programme.

Many products covered by the priority product declaration in 2020 are already part of voluntary product stewardship schemes. Under the regulations, the scheme needs to submit their existing scheme for accreditation under the regulations, otherwise the brands can join an industry-wide co-design process.

An accredited scheme refers to one which has been assessed and approved by the government against a set of rules or guidelines. It is usually accredited for a seven-year period and annual reporting is expected.

Accredited schemes can be voluntary or regulated. Voluntary schemes can choose to be accredited, whereas regulated schemes must be accredited.

An advanced disposal fee or levy is the typical means of covering the costs of a product stewardship programme. In this way, the costs are covered in the price of the product at point of sale and cover free recovery when the consumer is finished with the product.