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The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (“OECD”) and its Extended Producer Responsibility (“EPR”) strategy are part of Agenda 2030 and the circular economy agenda.

Yesterday we published an article on the UK government imposing green taxes on household goods.  This is the rollout of the EPR plan devised by the OECD in 2001 and updated in 2016.  The UK government’s EPR scheme will increase the costs of bureaucracy, the costs of administration and fees for producers in addition to the green levies on household goods.  All of these costs will ultimately be borne by us, the consumers.

What is OECD?

The Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (“OEEC”) was established in 1948 to run the US-financed Marshall Plan – an extremely effective Cold War tactic.  According to a 2019 article by Eric Zuesse: 

The Marshall Plan wasn’t merely “an attempt to weaken Soviet interest in their satellite states” but was instead an actual lure, to draw into “leaving the Soviet sphere of influence,” the nations “that were politically and economically aligned to the Soviet Union.”

This wasn’t really about “Soviet interest in their satellite states” but instead it was about the US regime’s policy, immediately after WW II, to take over not merely the nations that the US had helped in Europe to defeat Hitler, but also the nations that the Soviet Union had helped to defeat Hitler. It was, in short, a US grab, to control territory within the lands that the Soviet Union had saved from Nazism.

How the US Created the Cold War, Strategic Culture Foundation, 29 May 2019

OEEC’s founding European member states were joined by Canada and the United States and signed the OECD Convention on 14 December 1960. That convention entered into force on 30 September 1961, when the OECD was officially born.  The Paris-based OECD now has 38 member countries that account for 80% of world trade and investment.

A list of the 38 countries that have signed up for the OECD Convention can be found HERE.  These countries are referred to as “members.”  The Convention binds its members, unless otherwise stated, to decisions made by OECD.

Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa are OECD key partners.  Additionally, through its standards, programmes and initiatives, OECD “helps drive and anchor reform in more than 100 countries around the world.”

A Council composed of 39 ambassadors, one from each of the member countries and one from the European Commission, and headed by the Secretary-General provides oversight and the strategic direction of the OECD. The OECD UK ambassador is Natacha Alexander, former advisor to Tony Blair on the UN’s Quartet.

The OECD Secretary-General is Mathias Cormann, born and raised in Belgium and former Australian Minister for Finance, the Leader of the Government in the Australian Senate and Federal Senator for Western Australia.  Cormann has done an about-turn on carbon taxes since joining the OECD. As Australian broadcaster ABC News noted, Cormann, who once declared carbon taxes a “very expensive hoax”, is using his role as the head of the OECD to encourage countries to adopt more “stringent” carbon prices.

Considering the OECD supports the United Nations in ensuring the success of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – as evidenced by the OECD’s 12-page document Better Policies for 2030: an OECD Action Plan on the Sustainable Development Goals published in 2016 – it should come as no surprise that one of Cormann’s top five priorities has become “climate action to help secure global net-zero by 2050.”

Further reading: Behavioural Insights: The Second Team Leading the UK Government’s Covid-19 Response, UK Column, 3 May 2020

Examples of the Effects of the OECD

Below are a couple of examples of how the OECD has influenced policies that have affected our lives.

On 24 October 1999, the One World Trust ^[1] launched ‘Charter 99: A Charter for Global Democracy’. This document was published as an open letter to be presented to the United Nations’ Millennium Assembly and Summit on the future of the world. It stated:

In many ways we now have world government. It is not to be found at the United Nations. Rather, the UN has been sidelined, while the real business of world government is done elsewhere. Global policies are discussed and decided behind closed doors by exclusive groups, such as the G8, OECD, the Bank of International Settlements, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and others. These agencies are reinforced by informal networks of high officials and powerful alliances. Together they have created what can be seen as dominant and exclusive institutions of world government. [emphasis our own.]

Charter 99: A Charter for Global Democracy, One World Trust

Read more: Traitors in the House, UK Column, 8 November 2010

In 2013, David Cameron had plans. They weren’t his plans but his job was to make them happen. And the G8 conference in Northern Ireland which began on 15 June 2013 is where he had to do it.

The plan was a new global tax regime. Rather than simply making it a requirement for international corporations to pay an appropriate amount of tax in the country should they do business there, it was felt it was much better to create some great new globalised tax regime.  So, Cameron wrote to the leaders of British offshore tax havens asking that they “get their houses in order” before the G8 summit.

Cameron’s letter goes on to argue that a key part of the new tax regime will be information exchange. He asked all the tax havens to “commit” to the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters, originally developed by the Council of Europe and the OECD.

Read more: Behind the Corporation Tax Scandal, UK Column, 21 May 2013

What is the EPR?

OECD’s definition of EPR identifies two specific features: the shifting of responsibility for disposal “upstream” from municipalities to producers and encouragement through incentives to make the design of products more environmentally friendly. In other words, it is designed to shift the economic burden of the cost of disposal from the government to the producer of the product.  In reality, as we are seeing with the UK government’s scheme, it shifts the economic burden onto the consumer – that’s you and me.

According to Britannica, EPR does not reduce the volume of waste created but rather attempts to reduce the volume of material disposed of through landfilling or incineration. It is not a strategy to reduce the environmental impact of production or consumption of a product.  But knowing this hasn’t stopped the globalist train. 

Both the German and Swedish governments were noted as early adopters of EPR policies, having adopted them in the 1990s. By the second decade of the 21st century, EPR policies existed for a wide range of products; many targeted waste electric and electronic equipment.  But all these schemes were voluntary.

In recent years, the EU has pushed for eco-modulation to tie manufacturer costs for EPR programs to recyclability or recycled content in packaging. This push is in hopes of reaching the EU’s goal of making 70% of packaging recyclable by 2030.

As soon as we see a far-reaching goal to be achieved “by 2030” immediately Agenda 2030 and the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (“SDGs”) come to mind.  And the EU’s goal of making packaging recyclable is just that, it’s not environmentally driven, it’s agenda-driven.  Recycling is incorporated into SDG 12 which has 11 targets.  The fifth target, Target 12.5, is titled ‘By 2030, substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse.’

In France, in 1992 EPR law was applied for the first time to household waste and the number of EPR channels has only increased since then in France and Europe.  Thanks to the law on the circular economy ^[2] passed in 2020, an article in Open Edition Journals noted, this system in France is developing even further and has modified and strengthened the EPR system with 10 new channels.

Canada also has EPR systems in place for certain products such as batteries, electronics, beverage containers, paint and recently paper and packaging.

In the US bills to create EPR programs for packaging have been introduced at the state and federal level. In 2021, states introduced over 30 EPR bills, mostly covering packaging. In 2022, 11 states in the US introduced legislation on EPR for packaging and so far, four EPR for packaging bills have passed.

The original 2001 guidance to governments is not available to read online without a fee.  But OECD’s updated guidance is.  In its updated 2016 guidance to governments, OECD recognises as one of the major successes of EPR “systems” that they had “contributed to a multi-billion dollar recycling industry.”  A 300-billion-euro industry to be more precise. 

The cost of recycling, when all is said and done, has been recovered in goods that consumers purchase and taxes.  In addition to this, the OECD feels our governments should add a green tax to goods to incentivise producers.  The EPR scheme the UK government has devised has this to say:

As soon as we can, we will give you an indication of what the material fees will be in 2024. These will vary depending on the materials you report.

From 2025 the waste management fee will also vary depending on how easily the packaging can be recycled. Your fee will be lower if you use packaging that is easier to recycle.

Extended producer responsibility for packaging: who is affected and what to do, UK Government, updated 17 March 2023

The 2016 OECD guidance to governments describes four broad categories of instruments for EPR, which are sometimes used in combination:

• Product take back requirements.
• Economic and market-based instruments – deposit refund, advance disposal fees, material taxes and upstream combination tax subsidy.
• Regulations and performance standards.
• Information-based instruments.

The cost of implementing and complying with all of the above will, of course, be borne by the consumer regardless of what they say.

As well as “economic and market-based instruments” or taxes, the UK government is also using “information-based instruments” which require data be submitted to them on packaging used for selling, hiring, loaning and gifting including packaging that’s been imported, emptied and then discarded. 

The reporting is onerous. It will need additional man hours. and possibly extra staff, for both the producers and the government to manage.  And for both, the public will be expected to foot the bill; through increased taxes to support additional government spending and increased prices of goods in consumers’ shopping baskets as producers seek not only to recover the levies and fees but also the cost of their additional administration.

Notes:

[1] The One World Trust was founded in 1951 as the charitable arm of the All Party Parliamentary Group for World Government (“APPGWG”) at the initiative of its members including Clement Attlee, Winston Churchill and Harold MacMillan “to investigate and promote ways in which to encourage a greater sense of world community.”

The APPGWG was founded by Henry Usborne in 1947. In its prime, in the 1960s, the Group had over 200 members from the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Through the 1970s and 80s, the Group suffered from a big slump in membership. By 2000, the Group boasted over 160 members from both Houses of Parliament, from regional government in the UK and MEPs from across Europe becoming one of the largest in Parliament. In 2007 the Group had 163 members. The APPGWG was last registered in 2017 and is now defunct.

But the One World Trust continues to have a close relationship with the UK Parliament. It is also an NGO with Special Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

[2] France isn’t the only country in the European Union pushing for a circular economy.  On 9 July 2020, Sweden introduced an environmental strategy called ‘Circular Economy – Strategy for the Transition in Sweden’.  And in July 2022, the Circular Economy Act was signed into law in Ireland. 

Circular Economy is based on the recycling idea and maximum utilisation of all resources. Fine words which, unfortunately, conceal a dark downside, namely a red-green agenda that benefits a few, restricts our freedom and harms the environment. To be effective over time, the agenda confides in the Internet of Things, with constant connection where all material flows can be monitored in real-time throughout the life cycle. According to philosophy, this should lead to a world without waste, since clothing, furniture, lighting, appliances and means of transport are not owned but rented, which gives producers incentives to make products more sustainable.

In short, wrote Factuality, the strategy can be described much like the Danish parliamentarian Ida Auken did in an article for the World Economic Forum (“WEF”) with the startling headline ‘Welcome to 2030, I own nothing, have no privacy and life has never been better’. In the circular economy, property rights are abolished and everything is rented or reused.

A circular economy is classed as a key “global issue” in the WEF’s Strategic Intelligence platform. “The circular economy model has the potential to trigger far-reaching change, and put the world on track to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals,” WEF’s website states.

It’s no surprise then that WEF was excited in 2019 to announce at Davos a whitepaper that illustrated “19 Fourth Industrial Revolution solutions that can be applied to accelerate the circular transition.”  As a measure of their enthusiasm for the project, a search on WEF’s website reveals that “circular economy” has been mentioned over 8,000 times since 2 December 2021.

Featured image insets; OECD Extended Producer Responsibility, UN Agenda 2030, WEF circular economy