News
5/04/2018

Felsberg’s update on Brazilian waste law Environmental permit conditional on take-back requirements in the State of São Paulo

The São Paulo State environmental agency (CETESB) issued on 3 April 2018 Decision No. 076/2018/C establishing the integration of take-back requirements into the environmental permitting procedure.

As per the new standard, environmental operation permits shall be issued or renewed only after compliance with take-back regulations has been demonstrated.

 Compliance with take-back requirements as a condition to obtain the environmental operation permit applies to facilities that manufacture, import, distribute and sell certain products provided that said facilities are subject to CETESB’s environmental permitting procedure. Companies must abide by CETESB Decision No. 076/2018/C according to the following schedule:

Take-back schemes may be run either individually by companies or – preferably – in a collective fashion by representative entities or the so-called producer responsibility organisations (PROs). The schemes must ensure that 100% of the collected products and packaging is recovered and disposed of in an environmentally sound manner.

Facilities of companies that have, through their representative entities, executed take-back agreements with the São Paulo State Secretary of Environment and CETESB are considered compliant with the new standard so long as the obligations provided for in the agreements are being met.

Both individual and collective schemes must submit take-back plans as well as yearly reports with the scheme’s operational results to CETESB via SIGOR (the ‘São Paulo State Online Waste Management System’).

The penalties provided for in the applicable environmental legislation shall be imposed in case of non-compliance with Decision nº 076/2018/C.

This is another update on Brazilian waste law from Felsberg’s Department of Environment and Sustainability.

Kind regards,

Fabricio Dorado Solerfabriciosoler@felsberg.com.br

Tasso Alexandre Richetti Pires Cipriano – tassocipriano@felsberg.com.br

FELSBERG ADVOGADOS

This article is of a solely informative nature, and does not contain any opinion, recommendation or legal advice from Felsberg Advogados concerning the subject matter covered.