Whether packaging EPR reaches you is two questions, not one: are you the producer, and if so are you above the small-producer threshold. This page is the first. The producer cascade differs in every state, California has no importer tier, and private label sits near the top rather than the bottom.
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Working out whether U.S. packaging EPR reaches you breaks into two separate tests, and most confusion comes from running them together. First, are you the producer for a given item in a given state. That turns on a statutory cascade, and the cascade is different in each state. Second, if you are the producer, are you above the small-producer threshold. That is a separate question with its own numbers, covered on the de minimis thresholds page.
This page is the first test. A company can be plainly the producer and still be exempt on volume, and a company can be under a threshold in one state and over it in another. Run them in order and per state.
Want the answer rather than the rules? The Scope Screener asks seven questions and returns a per-state read, with the rule behind each answer and a label showing whether that rule was read in the primary text.
The obligation follows the brand on the package rather than the factory, but that is a description of where the cascades usually land, not of how they are written. Most states put the manufacturer in the first tier and reach the brand owner two tiers later. The first tier is drafted narrowly enough that it catches only goods sold under the manufacturer's own brand and goods in packaging with no brand on it at all, so an ordinary branded product falls past it to the brand owner. That distinction does no work for a normal consumer good and decides the answer for unbranded and co-packed lines. Your packaging manufacturer is generally not the obligated producer, though every state gives suppliers data duties, because a brand owner cannot file without component data it does not hold.
Beyond that shared principle the states diverge, and the differences are large enough to change who files.
Colorado (C.R.S. 25-17-703(30)(a)) and Oregon (ORS 459A.866(1)(a)) use structurally identical cascades for packaging. Each stops at the first tier that applies.
Note what the importer tier actually keys on. It is import into the United States, not import into that state, and it only engages when the first two tiers are empty domestically. A U.S. brand owner never pushes the obligation down to its importer.
California runs a different cascade under Public Resources Code 42041(w), and two of the differences matter operationally.
California has no importer tier at all. The words importer and imports do not appear in the hierarchy. The backstop is a seller and distributor tier, which catches more parties than an importer test would, because it reaches anyone placing the product into the state rather than only the party that brought it into the country.
Where the sale happens is defined, and it is defined chapter-wide. PRC 42041(w)(5) reads: “For purposes of this chapter, the sale of covered materials shall be deemed to occur in the state if the covered materials are delivered to the purchaser in the state.” Note the scope. It is not confined to the producer definition, so it governs the small-producer threshold at PRC 42060 as well as the cascade above.
That matters most for anyone selling through distributors. If you deliver to a distributor outside California and the distributor ships the goods in, the sale was not delivered to your purchaser in California, and on the face of the provision it is not your California sale. The plain reading is that you fall out of tier 1, and the obligation lands on the distributor under the seller and distributor backstop instead.
Two cautions before anyone plans around this. The obligation moves rather than disappears, so a distributor who works this out will come back asking for component data, an indemnity, or a different price. And this is a reading of the text rather than a settled position; a regulator or PRO may take a substance-over-form view of who placed the packaging on the California market. If your position depends on it, get it in writing rather than inferring it.
California asks whether you are in the state, not in the United States, and under 14 CCR 18980.1.1 that is a personal jurisdiction test rather than a physical presence one. A person is in the state if subject to the jurisdiction of California courts under Code of Civil Procedure 410.10. A foreign company amenable to California long-arm jurisdiction therefore stays high in the cascade instead of dropping to the backstop tier. That is a materially different mechanic from Colorado and Oregon.
Maryland (COMAR 26.04.14.02B(25)(b)) and Washington (RCW 70A.208.020(29)(a)(i)) run the fullest version of the cascade, and both are drafted in the same order. For items sold in or with packaging at a physical retail location in the state, each stops at the first tier that applies.
Two things follow that are easy to miss. The brand owner sits at tier 3, not tier 1, and the manufacturer is not a late fallback but the opening tier. And because tier 1 is scoped to a physical retail location, packaging that never passes through retail runs on the separate rule at Washington's (a)(iii) and Maryland's 26.04.14.02B(25)(d), which lands on whoever first distributes the item in or into the state.
Maryland also has a franchise rule that has no equivalent elsewhere. Under COMAR 26.04.14.02B(25)(g), where the producer would otherwise be a business operated wholly or in part as a franchise, the producer is the franchisor, provided the franchisor has franchisees with a commercial presence in the State. If you supply a franchised restaurant or retail system in Maryland, check this before assuming the obligation is yours.
Beyond the cascade, Maryland's chapter carves entities out of the producer definition entirely. A person is not a producer if they are a State or federal agency, a political subdivision or other governmental unit, a registered 501(c)(3) charitable organization or 501(c)(4) social welfare organization, a mill using any virgin wood fiber in the products it produces, or a paper mill producing containerboard from recycled content.
A de minimis producer is also outside the definition rather than merely relieved of a duty, which is a distinction worth noticing if you are documenting your position. The operative duty for everyone else sits at 26.04.14.06C: a producer may not sell or distribute products using covered materials in the State unless it is registered with an approved producer responsibility organization or holds an approved Individual Producer Plan.
A retailer selling its own store brand is commonly assumed to be a producer of last resort. It is the opposite. In Colorado and Oregon a private-label retailer fails the first tier, because the goods do not carry the manufacturer's brand, and lands in the second tier as the brand licensee, with the importer below it. In California a store-brand retailer is the in-state brand owner. In every case the retailer sits above the fallback tiers, not beneath them.
One ambiguity worth knowing about if this is your situation. The Colorado and Oregon packaging tiers both say licensee of a brand or trademark, not owner, while a private-label retailer is normally the brand owner rather than a licensee. Colorado's own paper-product tier says owner or licensee, and California's statute says owns or is the licensee, so the omission in the packaging tiers reads as a drafting gap rather than a deliberate exclusion. In practice producer responsibility organizations treat private-label retailers as producers. If your obligation turns on this point, take advice rather than reading the tier list literally.
If you fill or assemble product that goes to market under a customer's brand, the obligation generally sits with that brand owner and not with you. That follows directly from the general principle: the cascade keys on the brand on the package. In Colorado and Oregon you fail the first tier, because the goods do not carry your brand, and the brand owner or its licensee sits above you. In California the in-state brand owner or licensee is the producer. A retailer's store brand lands on the retailer.
That is the common answer and it is usually right. It is not a clean exit, because three situations pull the obligation back onto the company that did the packing, and each has to be checked separately rather than assumed away.
Foodservice and bulk deserve their own check rather than an assumption. Packaging that goes to restaurants and distributors rather than onto a retail shelf often falls outside scope because it does not reach a household consumer, but do not treat that as automatic. Service packaging and food serviceware run on their own rule in all three detailed-reporting states, generally landing on the first seller in or into the state, and California has no general business-to-business exemption: SB 54 reaches tertiary and transport packaging regardless of whether the sale is to a business.
Maryland is the one state with an express transfer mechanism. Under COMAR 26.04.14.02B(25)(p) a producer is not a producer where another entity "has agreed to assume responsibility by written certification" under a producer responsibility program for that packaging. That is genuinely useful if you and your brand customer want to document who files. Do not assume it travels: the other states do not provide an equivalent, and an informal commercial agreement between two companies does not move a statutory obligation.
Even where you owe nothing, expect to be asked for data. Every obligated brand customer needs component-level material, weight and recyclability figures for the packaging you apply, because they cannot file without it, and you are the party that buys the film, the trays and the cartons and knows the real weights. A co-packer with no filing duty of its own can still field the same request from dozens of customers in dozens of formats. That is a data problem rather than a compliance one, but it arrives on the same timeline.
All three detailed-reporting states run separate producer rules for particular packaging types, and these beat the general hierarchy. This is where a company that has confidently answered the general question gets a different answer for part of its portfolio.
Minnesota is not a wait-and-see state. Producers were required to appoint a producer responsibility organization by January 1, 2025 under Minn. Stat. 115A.1443. That is the producer-facing duty, and it is distinct from the organization's own duty to register with the commissioner by July 1, 2026 and each January 1 after that. Fees and detailed reporting arrive later.
Washington requires producers to be a member of a registered producer responsibility organization after July 1, 2026, or to register as one implementing an individual plan, under E2SSB 5284 section 104(1)(a). The organization registers with Ecology by March 1, 2026 and annually after. The enforcement point comes later: from March 1, 2029 a producer that is not a member in good standing and has not submitted an individual plan may not introduce covered materials into the state.
Maryland runs on the definition and registration structure described above, with Individual Producer Plans due to the Department by July 1, 2028 and a market restriction from October 29, 2028.
Maine is genuinely pre-program. The stewardship organization had not been selected as of late July 2026, so there is no producer registration, reporting or fee obligation to meet yet. It is a watch item rather than a compliance gap.
Packaging manufacturers, converters and component suppliers are generally not the obligated producer, because the obligation follows the brand. They do carry data duties, and in practice those are substantial: brand owners cannot complete a filing without component material, weight, resin and recyclability data that only the supplier holds. If you supply packaging, expect structured annual data requests rather than a filing obligation. The exception to check is whether you also sell anything unbranded or under your own brand, which can place you in the producer tier for those items.
Governments and, in some states, registered nonprofits are excluded outright. Small producers may be excluded by threshold, which is the second test and is covered separately on the de minimis page.
Three habits make this tractable. Run the cascade per state rather than once, because the answer genuinely differs. Run it per packaging type where a material-specific rule applies, because your retail packaging and your shipping boxes can land on different parties. And document the reasoning at the time, not later, because a position that is obvious to you now is the one a successor will have to reconstruct.
The Scope Screener runs all of this in seven questions and returns a per-state read with the rule and evidence label behind each answer. Where the rules genuinely do not settle the question, it says so rather than guessing, because licensing, co-packing, franchise and corporate-group structures regularly produce answers a form cannot reach. For those, get in touch.
Every state guide carries the full fee schedule, registration deadlines, program plan status, eco-modulation detail, statute and rule text, and exemptions.