Planning for EPR Compliance – What It Means to Brand Owners

The states of Maine, Oregon, Colorado, and California have packaging Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws in place since mid-2021. These laws assign the main accountability to producers or brand owners for the management of products after disposal, which means being responsible for collecting, sorting, recycling, and/or disposal of the product’s packaging. Brand owners are considered Producers if they sell packaged goods under their brand name.

Each of the states are going through a policymaking process. In most cases, an estimated timeline for program implementation has been developed, which can include key dates to assign or join a Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO), completion of state assessments, and in some cases, timelines for when to start paying EPR fees. These key milestones, particularly the timeframes to join a PRO and start paying EPR fees, are getting closer. In some states, such as Colorado and Oregon, the date to join a PRO is getting closer. For Producers or Brand Owners, this means you should begin considering future compliance budget implications. 

The NLCRC recommends that Brand Owners take a closer look at their packaging volumes in each of these states and estimate potential EPR fees. This will inform them of any likely budgetary impacts to stay in compliance with EPR. The fees are likely to be higher for those Brand Owners who will look to develop their own EPR compliance program versus those who collaborate with other industry members. Fortunately, changing legislation can represent an opportunity for the lubricant container industry to collaborate and move forward under a unified approach for the recycling of hard-to-degrade plastics such as lubricant containers. 

The NLCRC is bringing key stakeholders in the lubricant supply chain together to support the petroleum packaging sector to reduce the impact of lubricant containers on the environment due to incorrect end-of-life disposal and help companies adapt to changing regulatory landscape, which will have impacts across the entire petroleum and related packaging industries. Monitoring the current EPR legislation is a focus point for the NLCRC in 2023. Emerging legislation for packaging represents an opportunity for further collaboration within the lubricant container industry.

The National Lubricant Container Recycling Coalition or “NLCRC” is an industry-led technical coalition established by a committed group of industry leaders in lubricant and associated plastic packaging manufacturing, focused on establishing solutions for post-consumer recovery and recycling of plastic lubricant containers.

NLCRC members include Berry Global, Castrol, Chevron, CKS Packaging Inc., Graham Packaging, Nexus Circular, Pennzoil - Quaker State Company, Petroleum Packaging Council, Plastipak Packaging, Safety-Kleen, and Valvoline.

Connect with us on LinkedIn and Twitter. Reach out with questions or inquiries at hello@nationallcrc.com.