Harnessing the Drivers and Barriers to Implementation of Extended Producer Responsibility for Circular Economy in Nigeria

Obiora B. Ezeudu ()
Additional contact information
Obiora B. Ezeudu: University of Nigeria

Circular Economy and Sustainability, 2024, vol. 4, issue 2, 1461-1486

Abstract: Abstract Extended producer responsibility (EPR) is increasingly being recognized across the globe as a veritable scheme to realize the circular economy. This is because it has the potential to close the material cycles and foster effective waste management through the ‘polluter pay principle’ that allows the producers to internalize the cost of the environmental externalities of their products. Notwithstanding these realities, research on the drivers and barriers to the implementation of EPR at the macro-level circular economy in developing countries is still lacking, particularly in Africa where studies are few and primarily focus on single end-of-life (Eol) product analysis. Contributing to this gap in knowledge, the current study analyzes four Eol product cases in Nigeria — waste of electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE), plastic waste, glass bottle waste, and tyre waste — in an empirical investigation that involves an iterative process of case comparison and perspectives elicited from focus group discussions. The study findings identify major drivers of EPR implementation in Nigeria which include the emergence of social initiatives that participate in waste collection and recycling (4 cases), the pre-existing returnable glass bottle process (1 case), the organized value chain of informal waste recycling (4 cases), and already established producer responsibility organizations (3 cases). The main barriers include the absence of waste and economic data (4 cases), the absence of proper channels for waste collection and segregation (4 cases), the ineffective legislature (4 cases), unavailable producers (3 cases), and the availability of small and medium enterprises that lack the financial capacity to implement the EPR program (3 cases). The study suggests integrating informal waste recyclers into the EPR program and implementing a deposit refund system (DRS). Furthermore, it is argued that the best EPR for a developing nation like Nigeria, where additional revenue may be obtained from grants and consumer taxes, is the collective producer responsibility (CPR).

Keywords: Waste management; End-of-life products; Circular economy; Industrial ecology; Environmental policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s43615-023-00340-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:circec:v:4:y:2024:i:2:d:10.1007_s43615-023-00340-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer.com/journal/43615

DOI: 10.1007/s43615-023-00340-8

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Circular Economy and Sustainability from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().