The development of extended producer responsibility (EPR) provides an opportunity for fostering green innovation and a new business model by changing the institutional setting of the urban waste regime. As an environmental policy approach intended to create incentives for product innovation with lower environmental impacts throughout the lifecycle, EPR extends a producer’s responsibility, physical and/or financial, for a product to its post-consumer stage, and shifts the cost of waste management from local government to consumers and producers. This policy strategy addresses not only the physical properties of a product but also the related modes of consumption and production. As a critical instrument for circular economy, EPR has been implemented globally. In practice, EPR schemes are diversified in different countries regarding the characteristics of various products and local institutional contexts. Since the original adoption in some countries in Western Europe in the early 1980s, EPR has witnessed a significant evolution in order to adapt to the ever-changing environmental governance under increasingly transnational flows of products and services. This special issue is to share the most recent progress in EPR implementation worldwide.

Guest Editors:

• Professor Jingwei Wang - Shanghai Polytechnic University, Shanghai, China
• Associate Professor Xin Tong - College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China