Seven states have enacted packaging Extended Producer Responsibility laws. If your brand appears on packaging sold into any of them, you are likely an obligated producer with annual registration, reporting, and fee duties. This page covers what to do, in what order, and where the state-by-state differences cost money.
This page is free to read and updated weekly, and the fee calculator needs a free EPR Atlas account.
Last updated October 25, 2026.
Packaging EPR is an annual obligation in seven states, and it compounds. You register once, report every year, pay a fee based on what you reported, and live with design decisions that set that fee for years. The filing costs less than the packaging specified this year, which sets the fee paid on it every year after.
The obligation follows the brand on the package, not the factory that made it. Packaging manufacturers generally carry the data work in practice rather than a filing duty. Beyond that shared principle the three detailed-reporting states diverge, and the differences are large enough to change who files.
Colorado's and Oregon's statutes use structurally identical three-tier cascades. First, where an item is sold under the manufacturer's own brand or carries no brand, the manufacturer of the packaged item. Second, where the item is manufactured by someone other than the brand owner, the licensee of the brand or trademark. Third, where no such person exists within the United States, the importer into the United States.
Both states then reach the brand owner by rule. Oregon's OAR 340-090-0860(1)(a) counts a person that directs the manufacturing, including setting packaging specifications, as the tier 1 manufacturer. CDPHE's rule sets the order of obligation in four steps (6 CCR 1007-2 Part 1, s18.2.2(A)): the brand owner directing or performing the manufacturing of the packaging, then the brand or trademark licensee directing it, then the manufacturer where no brand is identified, then the importer.
California runs a different cascade with two consequential differences. It has no importer tier at all; the backstop is whoever sells, offers for sale, or distributes the product in or into the state, which catches more parties than an importer test. And it asks whether a person is in the state rather than in the United States, which under the SB 54 regulations is a personal jurisdiction test rather than a physical presence one. A foreign entity stays high in the cascade rather than dropping down it only if it meets the in-state test at 14 CCR 18980.1.1(a), which pairs California jurisdiction under Code of Civil Procedure 410.10 with in-state service of summons or with consent and producer registration.
A retailer that directs the manufacturing of its private-label packaging sits near the top of the cascade in all three states, not at the bottom. In Colorado and Oregon a retailer that directs the manufacturing of its packaging is reached at the top by rule (6 CCR 1007-2 Part 1, s18.2.2(A)(1); OAR 340-090-0860(1)(a)), and otherwise the statutes' second tier names a licensee rather than an owner, with the importer below. In California a store-brand retailer is the in-state brand owner. California puts an in-state manufacturer that owns the brand or is licensed to manufacture the goods ahead of the brand owner (14 CCR 18980.1.1(c)(1)), and Oregon reaches a retailer at tier 1 only where it directs the manufacturing, including setting packaging specifications, because ordering finished goods for resale is not directing manufacturing (OAR 340-090-0860(1)(a)).
Small-producer exemptions exist in every enacted state, and the tests differ by state.
Colorado and Oregon use disjunctive tests, so meeting any one listed criterion is enough. Oregon's definition lists seven independently sufficient criteria, so a producer with modest revenue but substantial tonnage can qualify, and so can a large producer placing a very small volume. Colorado's exemption operates automatically by statute. Reading either as a test that must be failed on every part wrongly pulls small producers into the program.
Both revenue thresholds are measured company-wide. Colorado's is measured on gross total revenue and Oregon's on the organization's gross revenue, which Oregon DEQ states expressly refers to global revenues. A large national business with modest sales in one state is generally not exempt there on the revenue test.
Oregon's tonnage test is stated in metric tons. And California has no tonnage or low-volume exemption at all; its small-producer exemption is measured on gross sales, must be applied for and approved rather than simply claimed, and does not remove the obligation to register. Colorado's dollar threshold is CPI-adjusted every July, so a producer near the line should re-test annually rather than relying on last year's conclusion.
Full detail by state is on the de minimis thresholds page, and the producer cascade is worked through in full on Am I an Obligated Producer?
Register. Confirm you are the obligated producer, then register with the Circular Action Alliance in each state where you have an obligation, or through an individual route where the state allows one, as California, Maryland, and Washington do. Colorado lubricant producers register with Interchange 360. California offers three pathways, and its election deadline of June 1, 2026 has passed, so a producer that has not registered by its deadline has a compliance gap to close.
Build the data. Assemble a component-level bill of materials for every covered SKU, then fill the gaps from suppliers. Nearly all the effort is in this step. Two supplier errors recur and both corrupt a filing if they go unchallenged: only post-consumer recycled content counts, not factory regrind or other post-industrial scrap, and weight means the empty component rather than the filled product. State both explicitly in every request.
Report. File the annual supply report through the CAA Producer Reporting Portal, covering the prior calendar year. Reports have landed at the end of May, though that is a date CAA sets as the PRO rather than a statutory one, and the states only aligned on it from the 2026 cycle. Confirm the current date each cycle. Detail differs: California, Colorado, and Oregon take weight across a full list of reporting categories plus brands and methodology, while Minnesota, Maryland, and Washington ran a simplified report in a short category list for the 2026 cycle. No state files per SKU.
Pay, then reconcile. CAA validates the data and invoices an eco-modulated fee. Oregon fees have run since July 2025, when the 2025 rates were set from 2024 supply data, and Colorado dues since January 2026. Both programs now bill on a two-year data lag, so 2027 invoices use 2025 supply data. CAA has issued the California 2026 early fee invoices, and 2027 annual fees are invoiced in two halves, in January and July 2027, with the PPMF portion invoiced once in January. Check the invoice against your own model.
Dates by state are on the reporting deadlines page.
Fees are weight-based and modulated by material and recyclability, and the spread is wide. Well-sorted high-value materials such as aluminum, clear PET, and corrugated sit at the low end. Flexible film, multi-material laminates, and foam sit at the high end, sometimes by an order of magnitude. That spread is why component-level material data matters far more than total tonnage.
The mechanisms differ sharply and do not transfer. Oregon runs bonus-only modulation for this program cycle, with three bonuses, A, B, and C, that each require a life cycle assessment conducted under DEQ's life cycle evaluation rules, with a compliant project report and third-party verification (Bonus C, for switching a SKU from single-use to reusable or refillable packaging, was added by the eco-modulation amendment DEQ approved on September 12, 2025). There are no maluses in force and no carbon black provision anywhere in Oregon's statute, rules, approved plan, or fee schedule. Colorado runs voluntary benchmark credits, 1% each in rule, and the rule requires the PRO to apply them to invoices no later than January 31, 2028. Its maluses are material and format based and applied automatically rather than design based. There is no LCA requirement and no concentrated-liquid bonus in Colorado. California would phase modulation in under the final draft program plan CAA submitted to CalRecycle on October 13, 2026, which CalRecycle has not yet approved: recyclability factors and source reduction incentives in 2027, no new factors in 2028, and active factors from 2029, including maluses on packaging features that cause problems in recycling and on hazardous and toxic additives. The 2027 passive bonus and malus are 5 percent each, and the later factors have no values yet.
Each state's mechanism applies only in that state, and features of European schemes do not carry over to U.S. programs.
Oregon builds life cycle assessment into its program twice, through mechanisms with very different stakes.
Voluntary. The three eco-modulation bonuses reduce your Oregon fee. All three require an LCA conducted under DEQ's life cycle evaluation rules, with a compliant project report and third-party verification, and a study without both will not qualify.
Mandatory. Separately, Oregon requires its largest producers to submit life cycle evaluations covering a portion of their covered products, using DEQ's own templates. The first submission deadline for large producers is December 31, 2026, and a producer that was not a large producer on interim market share but became one on preliminary market share has a deadline six months later, June 30, 2027 (OAR 340-090-0910(2)(c) and (c)(A)). Check which market share put you on the list before planning the work.
An ISO-compliant study with third-party critical review is a months-long exercise. It needs a defined goal and scope, a functional unit reflecting how the packaging is used, an inventory built from primary supplier data where it exists, impact assessment across more than one indicator, and interpretation with sensitivity analysis, before an independent reviewer can sign it.
Six challenges to these programs are live in the trial courts, and the seventh has been decided for the state and is on appeal. Seventeen state attorneys general, led by Nebraska, together with the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, sued CalRecycle's director and the Circular Action Alliance in June 2026, challenging SB 54 itself rather than its regulations. In Oregon, a constitutional challenge was tried in July 2026, the first packaging EPR trial in the United States, and on August 27, 2026 the court upheld the law on every theory raised; NAW appealed to the Ninth Circuit on September 24, 2026. A separate Oregon case produced a temporary standstill on certain pre-enforcement notices. In Colorado, the Independent Lubricant Manufacturers Association challenges CDPHE's approval of LPMA's individual producer plan and the fees imposed on lubricant manufacturers and says it moved for a preliminary injunction on August 18, 2026, and a second Colorado suit filed on July 30, 2026 has moved for a preliminary injunction; no grant of relief has been reported. California also has a separate challenge to its SB 54 regulations, and the Attorney General is preliminarily enjoined from enforcing the SB 343 labeling law.
None of the EPR challenges has produced a court order granting relief to producers generally, and the SB 343 injunction bars the Attorney General from enforcing the labeling law. On the free public record no EPR deadline is stayed or has moved, and penalties remain in force; an October 9, 2026 entry in Lollicup v. Feldon labeled Stay (ECF 13) has no text on the free docket, so its effect is not yet known. The current litigation tracker is on the EPR litigation page.
Everything on EPR Atlas, including every tracker, fee table, deadline, and the guidance on this page, is free and stays free. Advisory support helps in the six areas below, where the answer depends on judgment as well as facts.
Life cycle assessment and Oregon evaluations. Life cycle assessments under DEQ's life cycle evaluation rules for Oregon's eco-modulation bonuses, and its mandatory large-producer evaluations. Around twenty years of LCA and packaging practice behind it.
Supplier data collection. Designing the request, scoping the fields once so they serve reporting, fees, and LCA together, then running supplier engagement and holding data quality.
Fee reduction roadmap. Which design changes, in what order, against which state's scheme, with the fee impact and a business case attached.
Obligated party and scope determination. Working the cascade against your actual distribution chain, state by state, including the material-specific overrides. Rarely obvious for private label, licensing, co-packing, or import structures.
EPR operating framework. Building the internal program so annual reporting updates an existing dataset: capture at new product setup, ownership, governance, and a calendar across every state you sell into.
Process automation. Automating the data pull, the supplier request cycle, and the roll-up cuts both the annual effort and the error rate.
Inquiries to info@hartteradvisory.com.
Every state guide has the fee schedule where one has been published, registration deadlines, program plan status, eco-modulation detail, the statute and any implementing rule, and exemptions.