SPI Policy Statement on Product Stewardship

WHEREAS, SPI: The Plastics Industry Trade Association encourages every manufacturer, no matter what their product, to maintain the highest possible standards of product stewardship.

WHEREAS, SPI defines product stewardship as the process in which the health, safety and environmental aspects of a product are identified and managed from its design through its disposal, reuse or through recycling.

THEREFORE, together with the inherent advantages of plastics, maintaining the highest possible standards of product stewardship helps ensure the safe and responsible role of plastics in enhancing the quality of life. This means that every aspect of the product lifecycle should be conducted to:

• Encourage the safety of workers;
• Encourage the safe use of plastic products by consumers;
• Minimize impact on the environment by creating and handling products that, in their manufacture and consistent with their intended use, consume the fewest resources and generate the least amount of pollution possible;
• Design products that can be disposed of easily and responsibly, either through reuse in another application or by recycling, waste to energy conversion, proven degradation in an intended application or disposal in a landfill.

Approved by the SPI Board of Directors, October 13, 2006