Stewardship for Large Household Appliances
In partnership with the Product Stewardship Centre of Excellence (PSCoE), SSROC investigated stewardship pathways for large household appliances such as refrigerators, freezers, dryers, dishwashers and washing machines. Funded by the NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) Sustainability Partnerships Program, the project focused on how to improve the low material and gas recovery rates and better understand the appetite and opportunities for stewardship initiatives.
This project included:
- A review of international approaches to stewardship of whitegoods which highlighted that Australia is well behind Europe and parts of Asia that have introduced regulations to ensure that brands and manufacturers of large appliances contribute to the repair and end of life costs of appliance.
- Interviews and roundtables with the appliance industry and key stakeholders in the value chain that showed strong support for a regulated stewardship scheme to prevent free riders as long as it was codesigned with the appliance industry. Already a handful of brands run take back collection schemes but usually only when a new appliance is being delivered to a customer, this needs to become industry wide.
- High level economic modelling which showed that transferring financial responsibility to industry for the current collection and recycling costs for large household appliances would require industry to incur an estimated levy of $37 per appliance (around 2.58% of current retail price). The modelling also showed that, to increase repair and significantly increase material and gas recovery rates from the current 59% to 80%, the levy would need to be increased to $49 per appliance, this investment could create an additional 496 jobs in the repair sector.
The two main recommendations from the project findings are for the Federal Government to work with the appliance industry to design and implement a producer responsibility regulation for large household appliances; and that there is also an opportunity for the NSW Government to create a state-based producer responsibility regulation for large household appliances under the Product Lifecycle Responsibility Act 2025.
For more information please see the Stewardship Solutions for Whitegoods Report.
More detailed supporting documents are also available:
