Theme 6 — Performance and measurement¶
This is the theme most people arrive for and the one where the evidence is thinnest. The question 'does EPR increase recycling?' turns out to depend almost entirely on a prior question nobody asks first: what is being counted, at what point in the chain, against what denominator.
The same physical recycling can report rates twenty-five points apart depending on measurement basis. Until that is understood, comparative performance claims — including the ones made constantly in legislative debate — are not interpretable.
The articles¶
6.1
Does EPR increase recycling rates?¶
The headline question. No independent systematic review resolving it in either direction was located; what exists is a small number of studies and an industry-funded advocacy report.
6.2
How are recycling rates measured?¶
The most load-bearing article in the library. Collection versus marketed versus reprocessed-output bases, calculation-point reform, and why the same tonnes report different rates.
6.3
The comparative performance record¶
What the jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction numbers actually show once measurement basis is controlled for — and how little survives that control.
6.4
Litter and environmental leakage¶
Recycling rate is not the only outcome. Litter and leakage are what deposit systems demonstrably affect and packaging EPR largely does not measure.
6.5
What would real evaluation require?¶
The remedy: dual-basis reporting, preserved baselines, published terms. Unglamorous, cheap relative to programme budgets, and almost nowhere implemented.
What this theme establishes¶
- Measurement basis, not performance, explains most of the variation between headline recycling rates.
- The 2020 EU calculation-point reform changed reported rates with no physical change whatever.
- No jurisdiction has preserved the baselines that would allow its own transition to be evaluated.
Part of The Packaging EPR Library. Method and source rules are set out under Sources and method.