| Extended Producer Responsibility and Sustainable Community Development: Preliminary Policy Considerations Towards an Integrated Approach Conventional versions of sustainable development, described in the social science literature as ecological modernization(s), emphasize concepts such as resource efficiency, dematerialization and clean technology within a context of economic growth as usual. Extended producer responsibility (EPR) is an increasingly common policy approach within this strategic context, aimed at minimizing the environmental impacts of products, particularly in the post-consumer phase of solid waste management, through privatization of responsibility. This study is a preliminary contribution, in the multi-disciplinary field of applied environmental policy studies, to the analysis of the problem of whether the concepts of EPR and sustainable community development (SCD) can be integrated in order to arrive at a policy framework for solid waste management that is an advance toward the objective of "strong sustainability".; The research focuses on one model of EPR, the mandatory take-back approach, as it has been described as the "purest" form of EPR. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
