Extended producer responsibility (EPR) programs for packaging have gained significant traction in the United States in recent years.
EPR is an initiative with the potential to drive changes in packaging design and increase recycling rates. It is a policy mechanism intended to shift the financial responsibility of end-of-life management of products and packaging from taxpayers to producers.
Five states have signed packaging EPR bills into law—Maine, Oregon, Colorado, California and Minnesota—since 2021, while Maryland and Illinois have enacted packaging producer responsibility groundwork laws, which could set the stage for future legislation.
Several states also are in the legislation phase, including Washington, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New York, while Texas, Indiana and South Dakota are engaging in early discussions.
This policy mechanism, though relatively new in the U.S. when it comes to packaging, has existed in Europe and Canada for decades.
“We have 40 countries around the world that have some level of a packaging producer responsibility requirement,” Dan Felton, who was then CEO of Springfield, Massachusetts-based Ameripen, said at the 2024 Paper & Plastics Recycling Conference in Chicago in October. (Felton currently serves as president and CEO of the Flexible Packaging Association, based in Annapolis, Maryland.) “But even those programs are continuing to emerge.”
In the session EPR Implementation: A Progress Report, panelists explored developments in EPR legislation across the U.S. and Canada and weighed different programs’ requirements and effectiveness. Felton was joined by moderator Scott Byrne, vice president of global sustainability at Sonoco, Hartsville, South Carolina; Nicole Willett, vice president of EPR and operations at GFL Environmental Inc., Toronto; Shannon Crawford Gay, director of recycling and environmental policy at WM, Houston; and Anne Germain, chief operating officer and senior vice president of regulatory affairs at the National Waste and Recycling Association (NWRA), Arlington, Virginia.
At a glance
Felton said that while legislation is being considered at the federal level, a national EPR law isn’t on the horizon for the U.S. quite yet.
“[It’s] not the time for anything to happen at the federal level for various reasons, including the maturity of the issue and partisan politics,” he said.
Despite this, Felton predicted two to three more states will enact packaging EPR laws in the next one to two years.
EPR in Oregon and Colorado is expected to go into full effect this year, and brand owners in Colorado must be registered with the producer responsibility organization (PRO), Circular Action Alliance (CAA).
The EPR programs in Maine, California and Minnesota will go into effect in fall 2026, January 2027 and January 2029, respectively.
As for Canada, British Columbia and New Brunswick have fully implemented their programs, meaning producers pay for the program in full and own all materials, Willett said.
“The PRO in those situations contracts for the collection [and] the processing, and then they own the material afterwards,” she explained.
Other provinces, including Alberta and Ontario, are midimplementation, with the goal being to have fully funded EPR in every province by 2027.
While the U.S. has one packaging PRO—CAA—Canada has many. Some PROs are for-profit, while others are nonprofit, and producers can select which organization they wish to allocate their tons to. The PRO is responsible for collection and processing and owns the material, which then is returned to producers. PROs also set fees for producers based on the type, weight or volume of material the producer generates.
“What we found [in a multiple PRO scenario] is there was competition among the PROs,” Willett said. “About 90 percent of producers chose the nonprofit, producer-led PRO. We’re seeing the one-PRO model might be ... an easier path to producer responsibility and EPR than the multiple-PRO scenario in which producers and different PROs are jockeying for customers of producers.”
PROs also can be responsible for conducting a needs assessment prior to EPR implementation. Either through a third party or on its own, the PRO must develop a program plan, which could include performance goals based on measurable recycling data from around the state. For example, California has established a target recycling rate as part of its needs assessment.
“The needs assessment is very unique to the United States,” Willett said. “It’s the first time anywhere in the world we’ve seen this needs assessment concept, which comes typically before an EPR bill passes.”
According to Ameripen, a needs assessment is necessary in the development of EPR legislation, and Felton cautioned against states establishing stringent performance requirements without having the data to back these requirements up.
“You’re telling producers you’ve got to do this, but it’s based on somebody [who] put a number up and said, ‘This sounds like a good idea,’” he said. “To put that requirement on producers—when it’s not based in reality—answers that question: Is the needs assessment valuable as a first step? Absolutely.”
Contamination concerns
Among many factors, a needs assessment could evaluate contamination in the material stream.
“Contamination residue, if you’re going to do recycling, is a fact of life,” NWRA’s Germain said, highlighting a lack of education and “wish-cycling” as two of the main contributors to contamination. “We’ve been promoting recycling for so many years that we haven’t really been focused on trying to make good, high-quality material.”
She noted that many packaging manufacturers have expressed concern about the current crossroads of EPR and contamination.
“When they hear things like there’s bowling balls in those recycling bins, their reaction is, ‘Well, we don’t want to pay for that,’” she said. “If you’re going to pay for a recycling system, you’re going to take the good with the bad. That’s part of what you have to deal with.”
Because some packaging is designed for convenience or with other environmental benefits in mind, designing for recycling is not always prioritized. Germain predicted that as lists of accepted materials for recycling grow to include more types of packaging under EPR, contamination also will increase.
In municipalities where EPR has helped establish free recycling but where residents pay for their waste disposal, contamination is increasing as well, Willett added.
“My theory is that as the trash fills up, I can either pay for extra trash [in pay-as-you-throw municipalities], or I can put it into this receptacle where it magically goes away, called recycling,” she said. “In jurisdictions where it’s a pay for waste, … the contamination rates are significantly higher.”
Similarly, Crawford Gay expressed concern over lack of education as it contributes to higher contamination.
Colorado soon will have much more access to recycling where it did not previously have curbside programs, and though education will follow, the education process can be slow.
“There are going to be a lot of people that get recycling carts for the first time and, inevitably, there will be a lot of contamination that comes along with it,” she said.
Paying processors
To combat contamination at the material recovery facility (MRF) level, Oregon has proposed a contamination management fee as part of its legislation.
Funded by producers, Crawford Gay said MRFs will be paid a fee to produce clean bales with an estimated 5 percent contamination rate.
“That will be interesting to see how close we can get to super clean bales with a significant amount of money coming in specifically for that purpose.”
Other forms of MRF reimbursement under Oregon’s packaging EPR law include a processor commodity risk fee that will be paid on a per-ton basis, according to Crawford Gay.
“We will now have access to these per-ton funds to help pay off our costs,” she said. “This ... levels the playing field so entities out there that have already invested a significant amount of capital aren’t at a competitive disadvantage.”
Germain noted that having access to additional capital could help aging MRFs update equipment, making them better equipped to process the growing amount of packaging materials in the inbound stream.
“[Twenty years ago], glass and paper were the primary pieces in that blue box, and now we see a lot of flexible packaging coming [in],” Willett said. “In a world of EPR, there’s regulatory obligations that need to be achieved. … A lot of it has to do with working together with packaging producers as well as MRF operators and equipment providers to find that sweet spot of how do we capture what’s being created?”
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