Regional Capacity Building on Extended Producer Responsibility within EU4Environment

Two regional workshops on the Extended Producer Responsibility took place in June-July 2021, organised by UNEP within EU4Environment.

Part of the support to the six countries is the organisation of a series of regional capacity- building online workshops on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), which aims to contribute to a better understanding of the existing situation in the management of the packaging waste in the six countries and to unveil the most critical challenges in promoting the effective application of EPR.

In this regard were organised the 1st Regional Workshop on the 4 June 2021 and the 2nd Regional Capacity Building Online Workshop on 28 July 2021 on EPR in the Eastern Partnership countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Republic of Moldova, and Ukraine), by UNEP, with the support of its implementing partner Extended Producer Responsibility Alliance (EXPRA).

The overall aim of the regional workshops was to facilitate a regional dialogue and information sharing on the status of the EPR in the partner countries, discuss main issues and bottlenecks in the EPR implementation; and look at the mechanisms and solutions for a successful implementation of operational EPR schemes in the region.

The objectives of the regional workshops were: i) to present the findings of the EPR survey/questionnaire, identify and discuss common critical issues with EPR within the region; ii) discuss policy choices and pragmatic elements of EPR; iii) present and discuss the current best practices for the EPR schemes for packaging waste in 2-3 EU Member States; and iv) discuss opportunities for the EPR system establishment in partner countries, including the development of a regional approach to EPR.