It is a strategy developed to integrate the environmental costs associated with goods/products throughout their life cycle into their market value. It determines that the producer, importer or packager is responsible, in whole or in part, physically or financially, for the environmental impacts and the generation of waste resulting from the production process and the subsequent use of the respective equipment, as well as for its management when it reaches the end of its life.
Recycling
Companies are responsible for ensuring the recycling of the waste which results from the products and packaging they place on the market. With regard to single-use plastics, they are responsible for the end-of-life management of this waste and for the financing of the corresponding systems.
Adoption of prevention measures
They are required to adopt measures to prevent the generation of waste from the products and packaging they place on the market, to make changes to the design of products in order to minimise their environmental impact when they reach the end of their life, and to promote and report on campaigns to raise awareness of the need to send these products for recycling.
Responsibility for the management of end-of-life products can be ensured through an individual system or an Integrated Waste Management system, in the form of a Management Entity.
Electrão, as a management entity licensed by the Portuguese State, can take on all these responsibilities on behalf of producers, importers or packagers, by providing an environmental compliance service that guarantees that all legal requirements, in the context of Extended Producer Responsibility, are met.
The transfer of responsibility to a management entity is effected through the payment of a financial contribution - the eco-fee - proportional to the quantity of products, by weight, placed on the national market.
