LIFE4EPR

Presentation

The project LIFE4EPR – towards harmonized Extended Producer Responsibility schemes across the EU – has 3 main goals:  providing an EU-wide overview of EPR schemes at MS level, (b) contributing to the efforts to harmonise existing producers/products’ registers, and gain a deeper understanding of knowledge on environmental effectiveness of EPR programmes. In view of this, the project aims to enhance the effectiveness, governance, and cost efficiency of EPR schemes by studying current practices, developing a technical tool, and delivering policy recommendations.

Project financed by the LIFE Programme of the European Union from May 2025 to April 2027.

LIFE4EPR will contribute on the one hand to understand why the impacts of EPR schemes have been limited and how to better design policies so that EPR can deliver results matching its potential. On the other hand, it will also answer the need of a more coherent implementation of EPR schemes across the EU Member States. The project comes at an important time when the European Commission is looking into building a framework around circular economy. The Circular Economy Act (CEA) will be unveiled in 2026 however the work behind the scenes is already underway. LIFE4EPR project is an important piece of this puzzle, and it has a real potential to feed-in to the work of the Commission to prepare the CEA.

Activities

During its 2-year duration, the project will:

  • Map existing EPR schemes and PROs in the EU;
  • Benchmark a selected number of EPR schemes to understand what is working and what is not;
  • Develop of a prototype for an EU-wide product register and assess feasibility;
  • Engage with stakeholders, create an advisory board and expert HUB on EPR schemes;
  • Raise producers, policy makers and consumers' awareness. 

Partners

LIFE4EPR is led by Fundació ENT (ES) * and its project partners are:

  • Vrije Universiteit Brussel(BE)
  • Sotelo Creative Solutions, S.L.U (ES)
  • Zero Waste Europe (BE)
  • WEEE Forum (BE)
  • Erion Compliance Organization S.C.AR.L (IT)
  • ACR+, Association of Cities and Regions for sustainable Resource management (BE),

 * ACR+ member

Project responsible(s)