ERP, 20 years of making an impact: Hans Korfmacher interview

Over the course of several weeks, we presented various views on our history, key challenges and achievements, milestones that have defined our strategy and how we see the future of EPR compliance and how we can help companies and partners move in the right direction, with the circular economy at the center of their decisions and policies.

The first two decades of ERP have been lived intensely, always to provide a dedicated service tailored to the needs of our Producers, to whom we owe our creation!

Hans Korfmacher, Former Director Environmental External Relation and Global Sustainability Gillette Company, Boston, is one of the main actors who most contributed to the idea and creation of the European Recycling Platform, as part of the founding Producers (Electrolux, HP, Braun-Gillette and Sony), who rolled up their sleeves and went from theory to practice!

For our special interviewee, and getting back to the early ages, “In 1988 most electrical appliances, batteries, even lead batteries without the acid were burned in waste incinerators” and with a European solution “It would be valuable to the societies and a strategy to minimise and stop the distribution of toxic materials into our environment, which at the end is a measurement to protect our health.”

After some years, and already moving to the set-up phase, Hans shared that “We had to develop a detailed business plan, which requires the analysis of the respective markets, market players, identify service partners, the cost of various services and the breakdown to the level of envisaged services prices per piece of appliance. As of January 2002 about 200 people from the four companies started to collaborate in specific working groups to search for necessary data, provide analysis and planning. It’s like setting up a new operation.”

With ups and downs, advances and setbacks, “we must always see the opportunities of a failure.”

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Please check the whole interview here.

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