Producer responsibility in a sustainable development context: ecological modernisation or industrial ecology? PAULINE DEUTZ Department of Geography, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX E-mail: p.deutz@hull.ac.uk This paper was accepted for publication in March 2009 The concept of producer responsibility has become a major tenet of EU waste management policy. It forms part of an effort to set a regulatory context for firms supportive of sustainable development. Two contrasting notions of the theory and implementation of sustainable development are ecological modernisation and industrial ecology. Ecological modernisation emphasises economic development and technological advances, within a suitable policy framework. Industrial ecology, by contrast, emphasises inter-firm cooperation and voluntary compliance inspired by eco-efficiency savings. Recently, however, industrial ecologists have shown greater interest in the potential for policy implementation. With aims such as increasing recovery of value from waste, creating a demand for recycled materials, and decreasing the potential harmful effects of waste, the producer responsibility directives can be seen as attempts to implement industrial ecology principles. This paper examines interrelationships of ecological modernisation and industrial ecology to understand the potential and shortcomings of the producer responsibility regulations as a means to promote waste minimisation through eco-design. KEY WORDS: industrial ecology, ecological modernisation, producer responsibility, waste, environmental policy, eco-design Introduction P roducer responsibility 1 (PR) has become a mainstay of EU waste management policy (King et al. 2006) as part of its sustainability agenda. Regulations, such as the Packaging Waste, End of Life Vehicle, Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment Directives, all endeavour to make producers take a share of the responsibility for the disposal of their products at the end of their useful life. Evolving from discussions around priority waste streams identified in the late 1980s to early 1990s, these regulations extend the ‘polluter pays’ principle from the manufacturing phase of a product’s life cycle to the disposal phase. They are designed to shift the management of these specific waste streams up the waste hierarchy by setting targets for materials recovery, and thereby incentivising manufacturers to take end-of-life issues into account in product design. These regulations thus represent a significant shift in the conceptual framework underpinning environmental regulations in the EU pertaining to industry. Ecological modernisation has been described as the dominant conceptualisation of developments in European industrial environmental regulation over the last two to three decades (Cohen 2006; Baker 2007; Korhonen 2008). However, the life cycle approach of the PR regulations has been heralded as an attempted implementation of industrial ecology (Gertsakis et al. 2002; Mayers et al. 2005). Ecological modernisation (EM) and industrial ecology (IE) are two approaches to conceptualising and implementing sustainable development that arose respectively in northwest Europe and the USA. EM emphasises economic development and technolog- ical advances, within a suitable policy framework. IE, by contrast, derives from an ecosystem metaphor and emphasises inter-firm cooperation and voluntary compliance inspired by eco-efficiency savings. Despite resonances and potentially fruitful contrasts between the two approaches, there is a minimal The Geographical Journal, Vol. 175, No. 4, December 2009, pp. 274–285, doi: 10.1111/j.1475-4959.2009.00330.x The Geographical Journal Vol. 175 No. 4, pp. 274–285, 2009 © 2009 The Author(s). Journal compilation © 2009 The Royal Geographical Society