EPR fees are charges that certain U.S. states require producers of packaged goods to pay based on the weight and type of packaging they put on the market, with the money funding recycling and waste-management programs. As of late 2025, seven states have enacted comprehensive packaging Extended Producer Responsibility laws, no federal law exists, and rates run from a few cents per pound for cardboard to well over fifty cents per pound for hard-to-recycle plastics. If your company sells packaged products into any of the active states and misses a registration or reporting deadline, daily penalties can climb into five and six figures fast.
Who Has to Pay
State programs assign the obligation using a hierarchy built around control over the product. The brand owner selling or distributing a product under its own name pays first. When the brand owner sits outside the country, the obligation moves to the importer of record. Retailers can also be pulled in when they sell products from foreign producers who aren’t identified or aren’t complying. The design makes sure every packaged product entering a state’s market has one specific company answering for its end-of-life costs.1OECD. Extended Producer Responsibility: Basic Facts and Key Principles
In most states, a Producer Responsibility Organization runs the program day to day. The PRO collects registrations, publishes fee schedules, receives material data reports, and channels the collected money into recycling programs. Circular Action Alliance is the PRO operating across multiple U.S. state programs. Some states run their own compliance portals alongside or instead of a PRO.
Small Producer Exemptions
Every state with a packaging EPR law carves out an exemption for small producers, but the numbers vary. Revenue cutoffs range from one million to five million dollars in annual gross sales depending on the state. Volume-based exemptions typically apply below one metric ton of packaging material per year. At least one state adjusts its revenue threshold annually using the consumer price index, and some programs layer in additional carve-outs for specific industries or product categories.
One trap worth flagging: qualifying for an exemption is not the same as being invisible to the program. Some states still require exempt producers to register and confirm their exempt status. Skipping that step can trigger enforcement even when your revenue is well under the threshold.
What Packaging Triggers a Fee
Packaging EPR laws cover every layer a product travels in. The immediate container the consumer handles, the shrink-wrap or tray grouping units for sale, and the pallets, stretch wrap, and shipping boxes moving product in bulk all count. Producers have to track and report all three tiers, and material composition matters as much as weight because rates differ sharply between materials.
Packaging is not the only category of EPR obligation. Many states run separate programs for electronics, portable batteries, paint, mattresses, and carpets. Those programs are independent from packaging EPR and have their own registrations, fees, and deadlines. A company selling electronics in packaging can end up filing under two or more programs at once in the same state.
How the Fees Are Calculated
Fees are the total weight of each material type a producer places on the market during the reporting period, multiplied by the per-pound or per-ton rate that the PRO or state agency has assigned to that material. Published rates reflect what it actually costs to collect, sort, and process the material through the recycling system.
The spread is wide by design. Corrugated cardboard and standard paper products tend to sit near one to three cents per pound because they are cheap to recycle and have strong end markets. Standard clear plastic bottles fall in the middle. Hard-to-recycle materials like mixed-material laminates, aerosol containers, and ceramics can run fifty cents per pound or more. The gap between the best and worst materials can reach a factor of twenty or thirty. That price signal is the point: cheap-to-recycle designs pay less.
Eco-Modulation Discounts and Surcharges
Eco-modulation adjusts your base rate up or down based on how the packaging is designed. Discounts typically apply to packaging with high percentages of post-consumer recycled content, mono-material construction, or recyclability certifications. Surcharges hit packaging that uses toxic inks or adhesives, combines materials that are hard to separate, or has no viable recycling pathway. Adjustments in established programs run from roughly five percent to fifty percent of the base fee. Even modest use of post-consumer recycled content, in the twenty to thirty percent range, can drop a product into a lower fee band in many programs.
Registration and Reporting
Compliance starts with registration, which is typically free. Producers register through the designated PRO or a state compliance portal by supplying legal business name, employer identification number, parent company information, and contact details for a primary contact and an authorized representative who can sign legal agreements. After completing the form, the producer signs a participant agreement and gains access to a portal to complete state-specific registrations for each jurisdiction where obligations apply.2Circular Action Alliance. Producer Registration
Annual reports come next. Producers submit the total tonnage of each material type sold within each jurisdiction during the prior calendar year. Reporting deadlines across active programs cluster around late May, with most states requiring the producer report by May 31. Getting the numbers right requires coordination between packaging engineers, procurement, and anyone who touches product specifications, because you need the exact weight and material composition of every component: primary container, closures, labels, adhesives, coatings, and transport packaging.
Some programs are moving beyond weight reporting toward component-level tracking. Instead of the total weight of a packaged product, producers may need to identify individual plastic components, track ancillary elements like polymer coatings and tape, and map each one to a detailed material category framework. This substantially increases the data burden for companies with large product portfolios.
Material category definitions, fee schedules, and reporting formats are not standardized across states. A product classified one way in one jurisdiction can fall into a different category in another. Companies with broad national distribution often bring in compliance consultants or specialized software rather than handling multi-state reporting internally. Agencies conduct audits, and errors or inconsistencies uncovered during an audit can trigger retroactive fee adjustments plus additional penalties.
Penalties for Missing the Rules
Enforcement carries real financial weight. Daily fines for failing to register, missing reporting deadlines, or submitting inaccurate data range from one thousand dollars per day at the low end to fifty thousand dollars per day per violation at the high end. Some programs push the maximum daily fine to one hundred thousand dollars for third or subsequent violations within a defined period. These accrue daily, so ignoring a compliance notice for even a few weeks can produce six-figure liability.
Most programs offer a grace period after notifying a producer of a violation, giving the company time to submit a corrective action plan before penalties start running. Corrective plans can extend up to two years in some cases. That window only opens if the producer engages. Companies that never register and never respond to notices don’t get the courtesy. Beyond fines, the harshest consequence is losing the right to sell in the state at all: some programs prohibit the sale or distribution of covered products by any producer that isn’t actively participating.
What’s Changing
The list of states with active packaging EPR programs is growing, and several more are actively considering legislation. The European Union’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation takes effect in August 2026, which creates compliance obligations for U.S. companies exporting packaged goods to Europe. At the federal level, conversations about a national framework are happening, but no bill has been formally introduced and insiders say one is likely years away. Compliance remains a state-by-state exercise, and any company with multi-state distribution should be tracking new legislation as part of regular business planning.