Harnessing the Drivers and Barriers to Implementation of Extended Producer Responsibility for Circular Economy in Nigeria

Extended producer responsibility (EPR) is increasingly being recognized across the globe as a veritable scheme to realize the circular economy. This is because it has the potential to close the material cycles and foster effective waste management through the ‘polluter pay principle’ that allows the producers to internalize the cost of the environmental externalities of their products. Notwithstanding these realities, research on the drivers and barriers to the implementation of EPR at the macro-level circular economy in developing countries is still lacking, particularly in Africa where studies are few and primarily focus on single end-of-life (Eol) product analysis. Contributing to this gap in knowledge, the current study analyzes four Eol product cases in Nigeria — waste of electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE), plastic waste, glass bottle waste, and tyre waste — in an empirical investigation that involves an iterative process of case comparison and perspectives elicited from focus group discussions. The study findings identify major drivers of EPR implementation in Nigeria which include the emergence of social initiatives that participate in waste collection and recycling (4 cases), the pre-existing returnable glass bottle process (1 case), the organized value chain of informal waste recycling (4 cases), and already established producer responsibility organizations (3 cases). The main barriers include the absence of waste and economic data (4 cases), the absence of proper channels for waste collection and segregation (4 cases), the ineffective legislature (4 cases), unavailable producers (3 cases), and the availability of small and medium enterprises that lack the financial capacity to implement the EPR program (3 cases). The study suggests integrating informal waste recyclers into the EPR program and implementing a deposit refund system (DRS). Furthermore, it is argued that the best EPR for a developing nation like Nigeria, where additional revenue may be obtained from grants and consumer taxes, is the collective producer responsibility (CPR).