Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws are forcing companies to account for packaging with the same discipline they bring to other regulated business data: ownership, documentation, deadlines and cost exposure.
Packaging used to sit comfortably in marketing, procurement and operations. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is moving it onto the compliance calendar.
For companies that sell packaged products, the question is no longer limited to what moved through the channel. It now includes what surrounded the product, where that packaging entered the market, what it was made of, how much it weighed and which entity is responsible for reporting it.
Alyssa Dizon, director of product at rePurpose, works at the center of that shift. rePurpose is a packaging compliance and sustainability software platform that helps consumer brands collect packaging data, automate EPR reports and track changing regulatory requirements. Dizon’s team builds the software and translates regulatory and sustainability expertise into the tools, services and content customers use to manage compliance.
The legal landscape is expanding quickly. Seven states currently have packaging EPR programs in place: Maine, Oregon, Colorado, California, Minnesota, Maryland and Washington. Those programs are at different stages of implementation, with different deadlines, reporting requirements and fee timelines. (Husch Blackwell) Circular Action Alliance serves as the approved producer responsibility organization in six states: California, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington. (Circular Action Alliance)
The premise is simple. Producers who place packaging into a market help fund the recycling and waste systems needed to manage that packaging after use. The execution is anything but simple. Producers report covered materials, and fees are tied to the type and quantity of materials supplied and their impact on the system. (Circular Action Alliance)
That turns packaging into regulated business data.
Dizon gives the example of distinguishing clear PET in bottle form from white PET in jug form. Those details are not trivia. They affect reporting categories, fee calculations and, over time, the economics of packaging design. A cap, label, film, coating, insert or shipper may all become part of the compliance picture.
For legal departments, the issue is evidentiary. Can the company support its EPR reporting with records that are complete, consistent and defensible?
Answering that requires coordination across functions that do not always operate from the same dataset. Sales may know volume. Procurement may know suppliers. Packaging may know material specifications. Tax may understand state allocation. Sustainability may own the policy response. Legal has to understand whether the resulting report can withstand scrutiny.
Responsibility is equally important. EPR programs use an obligation hierarchy to determine who reports and pays. Dizon says there is no universal rule for every fact pattern, but the broad principle is that the company that commissioned the packaging is usually responsible. In many cases, that means the brand whose logo appears on the package.
Her example is a national toy brand selling into California through retailers, wholesalers or distributors. The brand still needs to determine how much packaging tied to its products entered the state. The relevant question is not where the product was manufactured. It is where the packaged product ultimately reached consumers.
EPR also changes the economics of packaging choices. Materials that are difficult or expensive to recycle can carry higher costs. Formats that are easier for recycling systems to process may be favored. Dizon points to the difference between multilayer plastic and monomaterial plastic, as well as incentives around post-consumer recycled content.
California adds another layer by tying EPR to source reduction. Dizon says producers face planning requirements around reducing single-use plastic over time, pushing companies beyond annual reporting and into packaging strategy, supplier capacity, manufacturing changes and cost modeling.
That is where spreadsheets start to show their limits. Dizon says many companies believed they could manage early reporting manually, only to find the work becoming more difficult as more states, categories and deadlines came into play. The problem is not that spreadsheets cannot store information. It is that fragmented data is difficult to govern, update and defend.
For in-house counsel, EPR is not a niche environmental issue. It is a developing compliance regime with implications for data governance, product design, procurement, sales allocation, fee exposure and market access.
The companies best positioned for EPR will not be the ones with the most polished sustainability language. They will be the ones that know their packaging data, know who owns it and know how it connects to their legal obligations.
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Alyssa Dizon is director of product at rePurpose, a packaging compliance and sustainability software platform. She leads the team responsible for the company’s software application and for translating regulatory and sustainability expertise into customer-facing tools, services and content. rePurpose works with consumer brands on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) reporting, packaging data collection and evolving state-level compliance requirements.