Solid waste: product stewardship.

The California Integrated Waste Management Act of 1989, administered by the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, requires a pharmaceutical manufacturer that sells or distributes medication that is self-injected at home through the use of hypodermic needles and other similar devices to submit a plan to the department that describes how the manufacturer supports the safe collection and proper disposal of the waste devices. This bill would create the California Product Stewardship Act and would require the department, by January 1, 2012, in consultation with specified state agencies, to submit a report to the Legislature recommending that one or more consumer products be included as a covered product for purposes of the act. The bill would require a producer of a covered product, one year after the effective date of a statute designating a product as a covered product, or the product stewardship organization created by one or more producers of that covered product to act as an agent on their behalf, to submit a product stewardship plan to the department, which would be required to include specified elements, including performance goals, a collection rate, and product goals. The department would be required to review and either deem the product stewardship plan submitted to the department as complete or incomplete, within 45 days after receiving the plan. The bill would prohibit the producer of a covered product from selling a covered product 6 months after the plan is deemed complete unless the producer or product stewardship organization of the covered product has submitted a plan to the department that is deemed complete by the department. The bill would require the department, 6 months after a plan is deemed complete, and on January 1 and July 1 annually thereafter, to post on its Internet Web site the covered products that are not in compliance and the bill would require a wholesaler or retailer that distributes or sells covered products to monitor the department's Internet Web site to determine if a covered product is in compliance. The act would require a producer of a covered product to collect the covered product pursuant to the product stewardship plan and to meet the performance goals included in the product stewardship plan. The bill would provide that a product stewardship program is in compliance with the act only if it achieves the collection rate specified in the product stewardship plan. Each producer or product stewardship organization implementing a product stewardship plan would be required to prepare and submit to the department an annual report describing the activities carried out pursuant to the product stewardship plan. A producer or product stewardship organization submitting a product stewardship plan would be required to pay the department an annual fee that would be set by the department. The bill would provide for the imposition of administrative civil penalties upon a producer who does not comply with the act's requirements. The bill would create in the existing Integrated Waste Management Fund the Product Stewardship Account and would require that the administrative fees be deposited into that account and that the penalties be deposited into the Product Stewardship Penalty Subaccount that the bill would create in that account. The bill would authorize the fees and penalties to be expended, upon appropriation by the Legislature, to cover the board's program implementation costs and as incentives to enhance recyclability and redesign efforts and to reduce environmental and safety impacts of covered products.