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Product Stewardship

NWPSC Member Solid Waste Division Integrating product stewardship principles into the policy and economic structures of the Pacific Northwest.

Product stewardship is an environmental management strategy that is based on the principal that whoever designs, produces, sells or uses a product takes responsibility for minimizing the product’s environmental impact throughout all stages of the product’s life cycle. The greatest responsibility lies with whoever has the greatest ability to affect the life-cycle environmental impacts of the product.

The Solid Waste Division promotes product stewardship in order to:

• Reduce local government’s waste disposal costs by sharing the responsibility for managing certain wastes with manufacturers, retailers and consumers
• Reduce the use of toxic materials in products
• Conserve resources by encouraging reuse and recycling through good product design

In an era when local government resources are limited, product stewardship provides a way to reduce the potential cost to ratepayers by placing more responsibility on manufacturers to design products that can be disassembled for recycling, are less toxic, and give some forethought to how products should be collected and managed in a way that conserves valuable resources.

Product stewardship strategies are part of the county’s 2001 Comprehensive Solid Waste Management Plan. At the direction of the King County Council and the Regional Policy Committee, a report entitled King County Product Stewardship and Strategies (PDF, 4.4 K) was developed in June of 2002. The report provides background information on product stewardship policies, an explanation of how target products and materials are selected and a summary of the partnerships that the SWD has formed.

Northwest Product Stewardship Council

SWD is a member of the Northwest Product Stewardship Council (external link), a group of government organizations that works with businesses, government agencies and nonprofit groups to integrate product stewardship principles into the policy and economic structures of the Pacific Northwest.

The goal of the council is to leverage limited local government resources to bring regional product stewardship programs and policies to the Northwest.

SWD is also a member of the Product Stewardship Institute (PSI) (external). PSI is a national organization that works with state and local government agencies to partner with manufacturers, retailers, environmental groups, federal agencies and other key stakeholders to reduce the health and environmental impacts of consumer products. Currently, 27 states and 25 local agencies are members of PSI.

Examples of Product Stewardship

The Take it Back Network
The network is a program developed by SWD to stimulate private-sector involvement in recycling used electronic equipment. Members of the network are private businesses and nonprofit companies that accept electronic equipment for reuse or recycling. By stimulating the electronics recycling industry, jobs are created in the private sector and consumers are provided with convenient drop-off sites for their used electronics. The program eliminates the need for the county to provide electronics collection and recycling at it’s transfer stations and reduces the county’s operating costs.

Regional Take it Back Network Pilot Projects
King County is the recipient of a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop a Regional Electronics Take it Back Network pilot project (PDF, 101 K). The project is a partnership with electronics manufacturers, electronics retailers and local governments to provide collection at large electronics retail chains in Western Washington and Oregon. The grant is part of EPA’s Plug-In To eCycling Campaign (external). During the pilot project, participating manufacturers will cover the costs of recycling their product brands, and retailers will collect the equipment from the public. A small fee may be charged to the public to cover the costs of products not covered by manufacturers. Government agencies will pay for publicity and media relations.

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