The Outdoor Power Equipment Institute (OPEI) has announced that it has issued a Stewardship Plan for outdoor power equipment to comply with the requirements of the British Columbia Ministry of Environment’s (MoE) Recycling Regulation.
To prepare for implementation in July 2012, outdoor power equipment manufacturers must immediately begin reporting estimates of their electrical-powered OPE delivered to Canada overall.
Click here for a review of the current Stewardship Plan for Outdoor Power Equipment.
Says Kris Kiser, President and CEO of OPEI, “We’ve been working hard to make this new government mandate as fair and non-onerous as possible for our members and non-members. To that end, we’ve selected a non-profit Canadian recycling and recovery vendor to help streamline this process for manufacturers.”
Program Background
The British Columbia Recycling Regulation mandating manufacturer responsibility for product recovery and recycling includes outdoor power equipment. On behalf of its members, OPEI submitted a Stewardship Plan for Outdoor Power Equipment on October 1, 2011 to the British Columbia Ministry of Environment for their consideration. The development of this plan began in March of last year with the participation of the Canadian Task Force (CTF), consisting of 14 OPEI member company representatives, along with consulting support specific to this type of activity in Canada.
OPEI has selected Product Care Association (PCA) as the Canadian recycling and recovery project vendor. PCA is a not-for-profit industry association that manages product stewardship programs for household hazardous and special waste on behalf of its members across Canada.
What do Manufacturers Need to Do?
A requirement of the regulations is to report Recovery Rates for each product category to the Regulation. This Recovery Rate will be calculated as the percentage of product recycled compared to the product introduced into the market place. This data must be collected periodically and reported to the Ministry of Environment annually as required by law.
