At FUJIFILM Business Innovation New Zealand, we believe that product stewardship is the first step to a circular economy. Given the direction that we are moving as a society it is the way of the future.
In 2016, it was recorded that New Zealanders produce over 20 kilograms of electronic waste per person, so we thought that it was only right to share our experience that we have had from implementing our successful Minister for the Environment Voluntary Accredited Product Stewardship Scheme (which is our product take back programme). This has resulted in the production of our Product Stewardship Roadmap.
The Product Stewardship Roadmap is a collaborative effort between FUJIFILM Business Innovation New Zealand, The Ministry for the Environment (MfE), Sustainable Business Network (SBN), and other MfE Accredited Scheme Managers. In New Zealand there are 15 accredited schemes which together have been successful in diverting over 1.3 million tonnes of product from being sent to landfill.
The purpose of this 6 step-by-step guide is to help businesses develop tailored product stewardship schemes and understand how more circular products and product lifecycles can be established by engaging with other businesses across the value chain.
Circular products are ones where the lifecycle and usage of materials has been maximised and, at the end of the lifecycle, are completely reutilised.
This Roadmap belongs to you – it is freely available for you to take the content, add to it, rebrand it, and give it to your customers, suppliers, distributors, and manufacturers of your product. If you would like to acknowledge FUJIFILM Business Innovation, then that would be great; however, this is about the bigger picture: to help product stewardship become the norm, and to help New Zealand transition to a truly circular economy.
So what are you waiting for? Go ahead, and download the Roadmap now!