MPSC 2021 Prelims Paper-I · Question 33 of 100

Correct — option (2), Germany. The Green Dot, in German Der Grüne Punkt, was introduced in Germany in 1990 by Der Grüne Punkt - Duales System Deutschland GmbH, just before the German Packaging Ordinance took effect, and Germany is therefore the country in which the programme began. It is the financing symbol of what has since become a European network of industry-funded recovery systems: a manufacturer who prints the mark on a package has paid a licence fee towards the cost of collecting, sorting and recycling that packaging, and the fee is set by the material and the weight. The scheme's importance is that it is the ancestor of extended producer responsibility as a working policy — the principle that the producer, and not the municipality or the taxpayer, carries the cost of dealing with a product once the consumer has finished with it. That principle now runs through India's own Plastic Waste Management Rules and E-Waste Rules. One point about the stem should be stated plainly. It describes the Green Dot as meaning the recycling of industrial polluted water, and that is not what the programme covers; the Green Dot is a packaging-waste scheme, and the mark says only that the producer pays into the take-back system, not even that the particular package can be recycled. The country in which the programme began is Germany on any account of it, so the misdescription in the stem does not affect the answer.

• (1)France — France did not originate the Green Dot. What makes the option plausible is that the mark is now used across much of Europe — it is described as the financing symbol of a European network of industry-funded packaging recovery systems, so a French consumer will see it on packaging exactly as a German one does. Use is not origin. The scheme was created in Germany in 1990 by Duales System Deutschland, immediately before the German Packaging Ordinance came into effect, and other European countries adopted the mark afterwards under licence. Whenever a question asks where a scheme began rather than where it operates, the answer is fixed by the founding date and the founding organisation, which here are both German.
• (3)Ireland — Ireland is one of the European countries in which the Green Dot mark can be seen on packaging, which is what makes it a usable distractor, but the scheme did not begin there. The Green Dot was introduced in Germany in 1990 by Der Grüne Punkt - Duales System Deutschland GmbH ahead of the German Packaging Ordinance, and it spread outward from that model. A candidate who has met the mark in a European context without knowing its history has no way to separate a participating country from the originating one, and that is exactly the gap the option is designed to exploit; the safeguard is to learn each environmental scheme with its country and its founding year attached.
• (4)Norway — Norway is not the origin of the Green Dot either. It is a plausible-looking option because the Nordic countries are strongly associated with recycling and with deposit-return schemes for beverage containers, which are a different mechanism from the Green Dot's licence fee: a deposit scheme charges the consumer a refundable sum on the container, while the Green Dot charges the producer a fee for the packaging placed on the market. Both are forms of extended producer responsibility, but they work through different parties. The Green Dot itself was created in Germany in 1990, and it is the German scheme that gave the mark its name and its rules.

Extended producer responsibility makes the producer of a good responsible for its disposal, and the Green Dot is the earliest large-scale working example. Germany's Packaging Ordinance of the early 1990s obliged manufacturers and distributors to take back their packaging; rather than each firm running its own collection, industry set up a parallel or dual system, Duales System Deutschland, which collects and recycles on their behalf and is paid by licence fees. Printing the Green Dot on a package records that the fee has been paid. Two misreadings of the mark are common and both are worth avoiding: it does not mean that the package is recyclable, and it does not mean that the package is made of recycled material — it means only that the producer contributes to the recovery system. The idea has since been generalised. Across the European Union, packaging, batteries, vehicles and electrical goods are all governed by producer responsibility obligations, and India applies the same principle through the Plastic Waste Management Rules and the E-Waste (Management) Rules, which place collection targets on producers, importers and brand owners. The alternative instruments in the same family are deposit-refund schemes, take-back mandates and landfill taxes.

MPSC's environment section tests international schemes and programmes on their country of origin and their subject, and this is a short single-line item of that kind. The examinable content is the association Green Dot equals Germany. What a candidate should notice is that the stem's description of the programme is not accurate — it calls the Green Dot a scheme for recycling industrial polluted water, whereas the Green Dot is a packaging recovery mark. A question can be answerable even when part of its wording is wrong, and the practical rule in an examination hall is to identify what is actually being asked, which here is the country, and to answer that. Arguing with the stem earns nothing. Outside the hall the distinction matters, because a candidate who learns the Green Dot as a water scheme will answer a future question about packaging or producer responsibility wrongly. The card therefore records both: the answer that the key requires, and the correct account of what the Green Dot actually is.

• The Green Dot, Der Grüne Punkt, was introduced in Germany in 1990 by Der Grüne Punkt - Duales System Deutschland GmbH, shortly before the German Packaging Ordinance took effect.
• It is the financing symbol of a European network of industry-funded systems for recovering and recycling the packaging of consumer goods, and the mark records that the producer has paid the licence fee.
• The Green Dot does not certify that a package is recyclable or made from recycled material; it is often confused with the recycling logo, which is a different mark entirely.
• The scheme is the original working model of extended producer responsibility, the principle that the producer rather than the municipality bears the cost of a product at the end of its life.
• India applies the same principle through the Plastic Waste Management Rules and the E-Waste (Management) Rules, which place collection and recycling obligations on producers, importers and brand owners.

• Taking the Green Dot to certify that a package is recyclable; it certifies only that the producer has paid into the recovery system, and it is routinely mistaken for the recycling logo
• Confusing the country where a scheme operates with the country where it began; the Green Dot is seen across Europe but was created in Germany in 1990
• Accepting a stem's description of a scheme as accurate; this one describes the Green Dot as a water-recycling programme, which it is not, though the country asked for is unaffected
• Mixing up extended producer responsibility, which charges the producer, with deposit-return schemes, which charge the consumer a refundable sum

Environmental programmes and labels reach MPSC papers as one-line country-of-origin questions like this one, as matching items pairing a scheme with its subject or its country, and as policy questions about the principle behind a scheme — the polluter pays, extended producer responsibility, the precautionary principle. The Commission also sets Indian counterparts of international schemes, so the Ecomark, the BEE star rating and the waste management rules should be learnt alongside the foreign examples. A single page listing about twenty schemes with country, year, subject and the principle each embodies covers the ground, and it is worth writing next to each one what the scheme is commonly mistaken for, since that is where the distractors come from.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Green Dot mark printed on the packaging of consumer goods in Europe indicates that

  • (a)the package is made entirely from recycled material
  • (b)the producer has paid a fee towards the cost of recovering and recycling the packaging
  • (c)the package is biodegradable within six months
  • (d)the product has been certified organic

  Answer(b) the producer has paid a fee towards the cost of recovering and recycling the packaging — the Green Dot is a financing symbol, introduced in Germany in 1990 by Duales System Deutschland, and it records participation in the industry-funded take-back system. It is frequently mistaken for the recycling logo, but it certifies neither recyclability nor recycled content, and it says nothing about biodegradability or organic certification.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The principle that a producer should bear the cost of managing a product after the consumer has finished with it is known as

  • (a)the precautionary principle
  • (b)the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities
  • (c)extended producer responsibility
  • (d)the public trust doctrine

  Answer(c) extended producer responsibility — the Green Dot scheme launched in Germany in 1990 is its earliest large-scale working example, and India applies the same principle through the Plastic Waste Management Rules and the E-Waste (Management) Rules. The precautionary principle concerns acting despite scientific uncertainty, common but differentiated responsibilities is a climate negotiation principle, and the public trust doctrine holds that the state is trustee of natural resources.