Product Stewardship is underscored by a public commitment. In adopting product stewardship, an organization establishes its responsibility that includes accountability and liability. Of great importance to this approach is the demonstration of efforts and results, proof of improvement.
Consumers Glass was one of the earlier companies to formally adopt stewardship in 1990. Consumers Glass' Chairman and CEO John Ghaznavi re-iterated this commitment in 1996: "Our Product Stewardship Programme (PSP) states that Consumers Glass will accept lifelong responsibility for its products, processes and packaging." Inherent in Product Stewardship is a commitment to sustainability, that is a systems approach for the life cycle management of a product. In the day to day art of practicing Product Stewardship all the people who participate in the system have a role to play. The individual has a right and a responsibility regardless of what entity, public, private or individual, he or she represents, to minimize the impact on the environment as efficiently as possible when the product is under the physical control of the individual.
Like it or not, when you touch the product, you are a player.
Consumers Glass is not the only company to voluntarily adopt Product Stewardship.
One of the important features of these programmes is their voluntary approach. Voluntary measures are recognized as being less expensive than the traditional command and control approach. In particular voluntary approaches can use more sophisticated techniques that are also innovative. Innovation is critical in the development of sustainable programmes. Why? Innovation has been identified as the key to economic growth and renewal. Making sustainability an innovation means that people will realize financial, environmental and social benefits. Success can be very attractive; don't you agree?
A critical tool for Product Stewardship is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). It is a mechanism to track a product's life cycle, including inputs, production phase, its use by consumers, the transportation and its outputs whether it is ultimately disposed of, reused or recycled. The expression "cradle to grave" is associated with LCA.
The art of LCA, while still evolving, does offer a better understanding of how a product is dependent on the ecology of the system it operates in. Consumers Glass has been active in the development of a Canadian database on packaging materials, the Canadian Raw Materials Data Base.
A trend that is supported by the discoveries made through LCA is a shift from end of pipe activities to design. Significant savings can be realized by working cooperatively throughout the whole supply chain. This reinforces the value of voluntary stewardship programmes.
Source: http://www.ec.gc.ca/ecocycle/english/whatislcm.html.
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