Producer organisations’ duties

The producer organisation is responsible, among other things, for organising the collection of products and promoting reuse, reporting monitoring data, providing information, and carrying out the producer organisation’s own monitoring and control. The activities must be conducted in an impartial and equitable manner towards all producers within the organisation.

The tasks of the producer organisation include

organising, on behalf of its members, the collection, transport, waste management and recycling of products, as well as submitting monitoring data annually to the Finnish Supervisory Agency
ensuring that recycling targets are achieved
maintaining a public register of members online
upon request, managing the Extended Producer Responsibility obligations of a new producer operating in the same sector
providing systematic information to consumers

In addition, the producer organisation must be solvent and have sufficient financial resources to meet its Extended Producer Responsibility obligations for a period of at least six months.

Equity objective

Extended Producer Responsibility obligations must be distributed equally among producers, taking into account the type and scope of operation. This helps eliminate barriers to trade and distortion of competition.

New producers must be subject to the same and equal conditions as other producers in the producer organisation. Joining fees must not be too high, and they must be proportionate to the quantity and type of products placed on the market.

Producers in each product group and producer organisation must work together to ensure that the implementation of producer responsibility does not result in duplicate fees to producers in other product groups or producer organisations, when waste management is organised jointly.

Producer fees

From 1 January 2023 onwards, the producer organisation has been obligated to determine equal recycling fees for producers in relation to the products they place on the market. Administrative fees must be determined in such a way that their proportion is not unreasonably large compared to the quantity of products placed on the market by the producer and to other fees arising from producer responsibility obligations.

In addition, payments must be staggered on the basis of environment. When determining the contributions, the producer organisation must, as far as possible, take into account the following qualities of the product:

sustainability
reparability
reusability
recyclability and
the presence of hazardous substances.

See the sector-specific details on producers’ fee shares at the bottom of the page.

Communications and publishing required information online

The producer community must provide information on the location and opening hours of the take-back points of end-of-life and discarded products and on what waste is accepted at these points. In addition, the producer organisation must provide information and advice on measures that can be used to reduce the quantity and harmfulness of waste, its reuse, and preventing litter.

The producer organisation must submit an annual report on their communications to the Finnish Supervisory Agency.

In addition, the producer organisation must publicly publish the following information:

an up-to-date list of owners and producers who have transferred their producer responsibility to the organisation
- the list must include the producer’s name and business ID as well as its product details
information on membership and annual fees as well as per-piece and per-tonne recycling fees
details of the principles and procedures related to service procurements
details of the compliance with the obligations for separate collection and recovery of waste
- reuse, recycling, and recovery targets

Measures promoting reuse

Producers (or producer organisations) must organise collection and transport in a way that avoids unnecessary damage to products and separates intact or repairable products and their parts where necessary. Sellers must also organise the take-back of discarded or end-of-life products in a way that prevents breakage as far as possible.

Producers are obligated to promote reuse when possible by informing the holders of the product and other waste management operators about the possibilities for the product and it’s parts’ reuse, their scrapping, and the location of hazardous substances and parts of the product.

Producers must provide companies and organisations that prepare the products for reuse with equal access to reusable waste from their designated take-back point, unless the producer prepares the products for reuse.

A written agreement must be concluded on the handing over of waste for preparation for reuse. The producer may charge the company or organisation preparing the waste for reuse for the costs of collecting and storing the waste. The company or organisation preparing waste for reuse must provide the details of the processing of waste to the party that handed over the waste.

See the sector-specific provisions for promoting reuse at the bottom of the page.

Self-monitoring

The producer organisation must monitor compliance with the obligations provided in legislation regularly and systematically. The producer organisation must draw up a written plan for self-monitoring.

The plan must include:

report on the collection of monitoring data, an assessment of the reliability of the data, and a plan for improving the reliability of the data
an assessment of whether the producer has taken care of the agreed costs
a report on the producer’s contributions and the grounds for their adjustment and their monitoring
procedures for the regular reassessment and development of contributions and their adjustment criteria
a plan for implementing and organising self-monitoring and audits to support self-monitoring.

A regular audit must be carried out to support self-monitoring at least once every three years by a person who is an independent and impartial third party to the producer, the producer organisation, and its owners. The auditor must have the knowledge, competence, and other qualifications required for the task. If the producer organisation has a certified management system in place, the audit can be carried out as part of the system.

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Contact information

Customer service for environmental issues

Ask our customer service by using service form (in Finnish)
E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: +358 295 256 920 (Monday–Friday 9:00–15:00)