New: two pages on B2B packaging and on reporting volumes you cannot see

Two new pages, both written because a question kept arriving that the site answered only in pieces. B2B Packaging and EPR: Who Is the Producer? separates the two questions that get asked as one: whether a company that sells empty packaging to a filler is a producer (generally not, and Maryland says so in its regulation), and how each state treats packaging that only ever goes to business customers, which is not the flat exclusion most summaries describe. Reporting EPR Volumes You Cannot Directly Measure covers what to do when you sell through distributors and cannot see state-level sales: the three allocation methods in order of defensibility, the states whose rules expressly permit estimation and their conditions, and the methodology document that makes an estimate hold up. (Corrected October 12, 2026.)

Writing them forced three corrections elsewhere. The producer page now says plainly that the familiar five-tier cascade is the Washington, Maryland, Minnesota, and Maine shape only, that Oregon and the Colorado statute have no brand-owner tier, although Colorado’s rule puts a brand owner that directs or performs the manufacturing first, and that California’s first tier reaches a manufacturer that owns or is the licensee of the brand. (Corrected October 12, 2026.) The state cards for Washington, Maryland, Maine, and Minnesota now quote how each instrument actually handles B2B packaging rather than paraphrasing it. And producer responsibility can be contractually assigned in four states, not one.

Update, September 24, 2026: this entry said Colorado has no brand-owner tier. That is true of the statute, C.R.S. 25-17-703(30)(a), which runs the manufacturer (own brand or unbranded), then the licensee, then the importer. CDPHE’s rule sets a four-step order of obligation that puts first 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 (6 CCR 1007-2 Part 1, s18.2.2(A)).