Government announces Regulated Product Stewardship

Sep 11, 2019

Government announces Regulated Product Stewardship

The Government is looking to declare ‘priority products’ for six product groups that can create harm at end of life. It is also looking to declare ministerial guidelines for the design of accredited schemes to manage the priority products. This is stage one of a two stage process to move toward regulated product stewardship for these products.

 

How does this impact brewers?

If Beverage Packaging is deemed a Priority Product a Regulated Product Stewardship Scheme will likely follow within the next 12 months to three years.   While there are a range of Schemes that could be introduced, the literature and research provided by Government leans heavily toward a Container Deposit Scheme (container refund scheme).

 

The Guild’s position

Although government are consulting on the initial questions and have not provided a full view of what the overall scheme could look like – it is important that the Guild begin to raise issues that may arise in the future with respect to the implementation of any scheme.  These include alignment with other ongoing consultations (labelling requirements), implementation timeframes and costs.

 

The Brewers Guild are reaching out to Guild members to include their views in this ongoing discussion, and reflect the opinions of the brewing industry. We encourage all members to take some time to provide this feedback on this scheme before September 27.