National Environmental Standards Set To Punish Erring Companies

Director General of the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA), Dr. Ngeri Benebo has vowed to implement sanctions against erring companies in the areas of environmental degradation. This will be done, she warned, through the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policy as part of efforts of the government to create healthy and sustainable environment.
Dr. Benebo who spoke to newsmen in Abuja said that this is part of the efforts to ensure that companies cooperate and keep to the end of their bargain of acquiring their end products from the consumer.
According to her, firms will henceforth be made to pay fines or face court sanctions.
The EPR programme was set up to ensure that companies buy back the end products from their users to ensure the sanitisation of the environment. A procedure that is tuned towards ‘the polluter pays’ principle.
The EPR policy is characterized by: the shifting of responsibility (physically and/or economically; fully or partially) upstream toward the producer and away from municipalities and the provision of incentives to producers to take into account, environmental considerations when designing their products.
Dr: Benebo said that all companies with products that have end products have been asked to set up collection centre where they can buy back their end products.
According to her, government has given the companies enough time to set up collection mechanisms as well as infrastructure that will take off some of the burden of cleaning up as government cannot do all alone.
“There are sanctions in place but we have not started applying it. We are giving them till next year to put everything in place. But before the end of this year, you must have your producer responsibility organization. There are people that they can contract to do it for them, that is their umbrella name.
“So you can decide to do it on your own or a group of you can decide to do it, but you must have an outfit, either directly from your facility or external to your facility to carry out this activity for you. We are looking at January next year to kick off the sanctions.”
Dr. Benebo said that discussions with companies have been going on for a while now, adding “they are doing some corporate social responsibility here and there, but they are not doing the buy back of their products, because that is what gives a toll on our sanitation in the country.
“Because you take your yoghurt you throw the pack away; you take your coke you throw the pet bottle away: bournvita, the Can is thrown somewhere.
“Government is now saying that enough is enough; let people be responsible for the end results of their products. It is a part of polluter pays principle and that is what is done globally.”  

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