This report for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) examines the scale of free-riding of producers and retailers across the Electrical and Electronic Equipment market.
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) systems are a policy instrument which require producers to be responsible for the environmental impacts of their products at the end of the product’s life. There are over 400 EPR systems currently in place globally: however, the increase in online sales has resulted in producers not registering under EPR schemes for the countries that they are selling into. This is known as free-riding.
Our report:
- identifies the scale of the problem;
- examines the reasons that free-riding occurs;
- identifies types of free-riders across the online markets; and
- recommends a series of measures to tackle free-riding.
