Product Stewardship is the act of minimizing health, safety, environmental and social impacts, and maximizing economic benefits of a product and its packaging throughout all lifecycle stages. The producer of the product has the greatest ability to minimize adverse impacts, but other stakeholders, such as suppliers, retailers, and consumers, also play a role.

Stewardship can be either voluntary or required by law.  Taxpayers shouldn’t always be on the hook for paying for items like packaging, over which they have little control.  Producers should include externalized costs, like pollution and disposal into the cost of the product so that consumers (not the same as taxpayers, though they overlap) can make good choices.

Extended Producer Responsibility or EPR is a mandatory type of Product Stewardship that includes, at a minimum, the requirement that the producer’s responsibility for their product extends to Post-Consumer management of that product and its packaging. There are two related features of EPR policy: 

• shifting financial and management responsibility, with government oversight, upstream to the producer and away from the public sector; and
• providing incentives to producers to incorporate environmental considerations into the design of their products and packaging.

These definitions were developed in 2011 by the growing Product Stewardship movement to harmonize the way the terms were being used in the US.  The signatories include the Product Stewardship Institute, the Product Policy Institute (now Upstream), and the California Product Stewardship Council. In states, and smaller jurisdiction there are currently 141 EPR laws (changes quickly; don’t count on this number being up to date!) in 33 states on 20 products, including batteries (primary and rechargeable), carpet, electronics, gas cylinders, household hazard waste, mattresses, mercury lamps, mercury switches, mercury thermostats, packaging (new!), paint, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, refrigerants, sharps,  solar panels, textiles, and tires. Massachusetts lags many of its neighbors, with only laws for mercury products and an expired one for pharmaceuticals.  

In most, recently-written Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws, there are 3 key players: 

1.      The Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO) or Stewardship organization is formed by the Producers, or Manufacturers/Brand owners.   That is the usually-non-profit entity that is responsible for designing the Program, running it, and paying for it.  Occasionally the retailers may be included here, but that’s not common.  The Producers are the ones thought to have the most control over the design of the product, including how recyclable it is, what packaging is used, how toxic it is, and so forth.  The PRO generally writes a Plan laying out how the Program is to be operated, in compliance with the rules and regulations set out in the law.

2.      The government agency is usually a State Department of Environmental Protection/Conservation or similarly named entity, who does NOT run the program, but who reviews and approves or denies the Plan put together by the PRO to make sure it conforms to the law, and that it should improve the environmental situation over time.  While the PRO has an incentive to cut costs and improve efficiency, the state’s role is to set basic standards, enforce them, and prevent a race to the bottom. 

3.      The newer player in the world of EPR is the Advisory Council.  This is a place all the other stakeholders can gather to review the Plan and actions of the PRO and make recommendations to the PRO and the government agency.  This is where Retailers, Environmental groups, and concerned citizens can get a chance to sign off on the initial Plan and any revisions.  It rarely has direct power over the Plan or the PRO, but it should contain outside experts who improve the overall implementation of the Program.

We suggest checking out the  Product Stewardship Institute’s website.

“Locally” for EPR usually (not always) means work done at the state level.  In Massachusetts, much of this work is spearheaded by the Massachusetts Product Stewardship Council, which operates under MassRecycle. 

Greening Greenfield pays attention to any Massachusetts EPR bills, but is currently focusing its attention on Paint EPR legislation, which is a GG Initiative.