Polluting firms to pay fines, face criminal charges from 2015

Considering the high level of non-compliance with the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policy by manufacturing firms, the Federal Government will from 2015 apply sanctions against erring firms as part of efforts to create a healthy and sustainable environment.

The sanctions, which are to be meted from next January, include monetary penalties and legal action to defaulting firms and are meant to ensure that companies cooperate and keep their end of the bargain by re-acquiring their end products from the consumers.

“They will pay fines and if the errant refuses to pay the fine, criminal charges will be filed against him,” disclosed Ngeri Benebo, director-general, National Environmental Standards and Regulations Agency (NESREA), in an exclusive interview with BusinessDay.

The EPR programme was set up to ensure that companies buy back the end products from their users to ensure the sanitisation of the environment.

The procedure is tuned towards ‘the polluter pays’ principle. It is also an environmental policy approach in which a producer’s responsibility for a product is extended to the post-consumer stage of the product’s life cycle.

Firms affected by this policy include those using bottles, cans, sachets, plastics and others to package their products. They are expected to buy back the empty containers after the products have been consumed.

Prior to the implementation of the policy, the Federal Government had asked companies with goods that have end products to set up collection centres where they can buy them back.

Government has also given the companies enough grace to comply and provide infrastructure that would take off some of the burden of cleaning up the environment.

“We have not started applying the sanctions; we are giving them till next year to be able to put everything in place. But before the end of this year, they must have their producer responsibility organisations,” Benebo said.

“Producer responsibility organisations are firms that they can contract to do it for them. So they can decide to do it on their own or as a group, but they must have an outfit, either directly from their facilities or external to their facilities, to carry out this activity for them. We are looking at January next year to kick off the sanctions,” she added.

Benebo said the sanctions were delayed to give ample time for on-going discussions with companies and to also allow them time to put in place all they needed for the EPR.

“They are doing some corporate social responsibility here and there, but they are not doing the buy-back of their products, because that is what takes a toll on our sanitation in the country. When you take your yoghurt and throw away the packs, they litter the environment,” she said.

“Also, new models of devices, electronics and phones are coming in every day, while we discard old ones. One can imagine the number of batteries that we throw away with old devices every day,” she added.

She, however, observed that some companies were already buying into the programme after initially dragging their feet over gathering end products from far and wide.

“So wherever you have a distribution network, use the same distribution network to collect and evolve a safe and environmentally sound method of disposing those products. In that way, the burden of the waste is taken off a little bit from the municipality, because government cannot do all this alone,” she said, adding that everyone should be accountable for their wastes.

Benebo insisted that all companies, whether small or large, whose products are consumed in Nigeria were under obligation to strictly adhere to the EPR policy.

“If you are a small company, your products can’t go far, so you can easily retrieve your products because you don’t have the distribution networks. Since you don’t have the distribution network, your products in Abuja cannot get to Borno State. And if you are small, your products will not cause such a menace to the society, unlike Coca-Cola and telephones that you find everywhere you go,” she said.

For water sachets, she noted that a lot of them were currently being taken off the streets, while unfortunately more were being thrown back in. She added that in some states also, some cottage industries had mandated people to go round picking the empty sachets for a pay. These sachets are later recycled into smaller balls which are used for some other products.

Elizabeth Archibong