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. What to do, in what order, and where the state-by-state differences will cost you.
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Facts on this page were last verified against primary sources on July 26, 2026. The EPR Atlas is re-checked weekly; this stamp moves only when a verification pass actually runs, not when the site rebuilds.
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 expensive part is not the filing. It is that the packaging specified this year determines what you pay on it every year after.
The obligation follows the brand on the package, not the factory that made it. Packaging manufacturers generally carry data duties 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 and Oregon 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.
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 reachable by California long-arm jurisdiction stays high in the cascade rather than dropping down it.
A retailer selling its own private label sits near the top of the cascade in all three states, not at the bottom. In Colorado and Oregon it fails the first tier, because the goods do not carry the manufacturer's brand, and lands in the second tier as brand licensee, with the importer below it. In California a store-brand retailer is the in-state brand owner. This ordering surprises people who assume retailers are a last resort.
Small-producer exemptions exist in every enacted state, and the tests are more generous than most producers assume. They are also stated wrongly more often than any other part of these programs.
Colorado and Oregon are disjunctive tests. 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 prong wrongly pulls small producers into the program.
Both revenue thresholds are company-wide, not in-state. 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 prong. This is the more expensive of the two errors.
Two further points. Oregon's tonnage prong is stated in metric tons, not short 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. California offers three pathways rather than one, and its election deadline of June 1, 2026 has passed, so a producer that has not registered is now addressing a compliance gap rather than making a choice.
Build the data. Assemble a component-level bill of materials for every covered SKU, then fill the gaps from suppliers. Nearly all the effort sits here. 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 all require detailed reports, while Minnesota, Maryland and Washington ran a simplified aggregate report for the 2026 cycle.
Pay, then reconcile. CAA validates the data and invoices an eco-modulated fee. Oregon fees have run since July 2025 and Colorado dues since January 2026 on a two-year data lag. California early fees are estimated for August 2026 with full program fees from January 2027. Read the invoice against your own model rather than filing it.
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 that each require a life cycle assessment conducted to ISO 14040 and 14044 and subjected to third-party critical review. 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 applied to 2027 invoices, alongside maluses that 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 phases modulation in over three years: passive only in 2027, active feature-based maluses from 2028, and hazardous additive maluses in 2029, with values not yet set.
Importing one state's mechanism into another, or importing a European scheme's features into a U.S. program, is the single most common source of wrong advice in this field.
Oregon is the only enacted state that puts life cycle assessment at the center of its program, and it does so twice, through mechanisms that carry very different stakes.
Voluntary. The three eco-modulation bonuses reduce your Oregon fee. All three require an LCA conducted to ISO 14040 and 14044 with third-party critical review. That is a specific technical standard, not a general environmental study, and a report that has not been through a compliant critical review 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 submissions are due December 31, 2026, with a trap in the timing: producers who appeared on both the preliminary large-producer list and the final list are due at the end of 2026, while producers appearing only on the final list have until June 30, 2027. Check which list you were on 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 actually 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. It does not compress well against a deadline.
Three challenges to these programs are live. 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, with a ruling expected. A separate Oregon case produced a temporary standstill on certain pre-enforcement notices. In Colorado, a challenge to the lubricant packaging program's fee methodology is fully briefed with no ruling.
None of these has produced relief reaching producers generally. Nothing is stayed, no deadline has moved, and penalties remain in force. The current litigation tracker is on the EPR litigation page. The practical instruction is unchanged: keep registering, keep filing, keep paying.
Everything on EPR Atlas, including every tracker, fee table, deadline and the guidance on this page, is free and stays free. Six areas genuinely benefit from advisory support, and they are the places where judgment rather than facts decides the answer.
Life cycle assessment and Oregon evaluations. ISO 14040 and 14044 studies with third-party critical review, for Oregon's eco-modulation bonuses or 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. The part most programs underestimate.
Fee reduction roadmap. Which design changes, in what order, against which state's scheme, with the fee impact and a business case attached. A calculator produces an estimate; a roadmap produces a plan.
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 reporting becomes a refresh rather than a fire drill: capture at new product setup, ownership, governance, and a calendar across every state you sell into.
Process automation. Most producers got through the first cycle manually, in spreadsheets and email. The second is where that stops paying. 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 carries the full fee schedule, registration deadlines, program plan status, eco-modulation detail, statute and rule text, and exemptions.