Extended Producer Responsibility to Reduce Plastic Waste Pollution

Abstract

Research background
Plastic debris in the environment consists primarily of plastic consumer waste. One of its leading causes is the lack of waste collection systems in developing countries. Actions need to be taken to overcome this issue, and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) seems to be an effective solution for encountering plastic waste. Indonesia is the second-largest plastic polluter and is, therefore, a location of interest for implementing EPR systems.

EPR is a policy approach in which producers become responsible for the whole life cycle of their product. In Europe, this is a standard tool that makes producers (mostly financially) accountable for the end-of-life stage of their product. EPR can also stimulate design-for-environment: optimizing products to become more reusable or recyclable. EPR consists of many instruments that can be implemented in different ways. Still, little research has been done on which instruments can be effectively applied in developing countries like Indonesia. There are no EPR instruments currently used, little waste management infrastructure exists, and most recycling activities are realized through informal waste collectors. These types of local factors are of great importance when implementing waste management policies like EPR.

Two gaps were found in previous literature. First, the effects of individual and combinations of EPR instruments on developing waste management systems have not been researched before. Secondly, simulation studies have not analyzed EPR instruments in combination with contextual factors of the country of interest. Therefore, this thesis tries to answer the following research question.
“What are the effects of 3 selected Extended Producer Responsibility instruments on the key actors in the plastic waste system of average cities in Indonesia?”

Research approach
A design-science research approach is combined with an agent-based model to answer this question, consisting of three parts.
First, the Knowledge base was established by desk research. Literature was consulted to find the state of the art of the most critical aspects of the study: plastic waste in Indonesia and EPR. Secondly, the Environment is created by integrating semi-structured interviews with literature to find important factors that make the implementation of EPR interventions in the context of Indonesia more realistic. The third part of the design science research is to design the artifact. A conceptual model was made of the plastic waste system in Indonesia. This model was put into the programming language NetLogo, which can capture agent behavior in complex adaptive systems...