Note: The information on this page is accurate as of June 18, 2026 – For a better understanding of your obligations, you can book a discovery call where our team will answer all your questions
Our quarterly EPR State of Play is a comprehensive look at EPR across North America together to cut through a fragmenting regulatory picture. Different timelines, definitions, reporting requirements, PROs, and levels of enforcement depending on where you sell, what you sell, and how you operate. This session ran across the full North American map: packaging EPR in the United States, deposit return systems and recycled-content rules, Canada’s move to harmonized provincial reporting, and the Federal Plastics Registry.
The throughline: the obligations that look like separate fire drills share enough underlying data that they can (and should) be managed as one program.
A year ago there were three states with producer reporting in force. There are now seven states with packaging EPR obligations: the original three have moved into their second year of reporting, while Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington came online this cycle with simplified pre-program reporting that will deepen over time. Maine, first to pass, last to implement restarted its program this week when the state DEP began accepting proposals for a stewardship organization.
Beyond those seven, three states have completed needs-assessment phases (the preferred first step), and roughly eleven more have EPR at some stage of the legislative process. Little more is expected to pass in 2026 now that state sessions have closed. New York timed out for the third year running, and New Jersey may now reach the finish line before New York does.
Reporting deadline: producer reporting was due May 31 (effectively June 1). If you missed it, you can still file, to date, no producer has been financially penalized for late reporting. Circular Action Alliance (CAA), the PRO for six of the seven states, wants that data, and getting it in late is far better than not at all.
Oregon: The first to enforce. Oregon is furthest along: CAA has moved into spending, building out drop-off infrastructure in rural areas, and into enforcement. The state has published a list of roughly 250 non-reporting “free riders,” and has begun issuing notices of delinquency that typically allow 90 days to come into compliance. Separately, a February lawsuit from the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (arguing restraint of interstate trade and excessive authority handed to the PRO) is set to be heard in July.
California released its finalized SB 54 program document this week, with public comment open until August 14. It faces a counter-lawsuit from environmental groups arguing it doesn’t go far enough, and a parallel “Truth in Recycling” bill (SB 343) restricting the chasing-arrows symbol is now prompting early talk of a federal standard on recyclability claims.
The piece drawing the most questions: SB 54’s individual source reduction plan, due August 1. Under the program, plastic packaging must fall 25% by 2032, with interim benchmarks of 10% by 2027 and 20% by 2030.
Producers can pursue five pathways: reuse/refill, elimination, switching to non-plastic materials, right-sizing/lightweighting/concentration, and post-consumer recycled (PCR) content (currently capped at 8% of the calculation). A reuse/refill component is required, which is genuinely difficult for sectors like cosmetics and personal care.
Two things to plan around: the baseline math is a net reduction that does not offset for sales growth, so rising volumes can erase real progress; and there is a credit pathway for source reduction already achieved between 2013 and 2022, so it pays to look backward as well as forward. Missing targets won’t trigger a direct fine today, but CAA intends to police results through a bonus/malus ecomodulation scheme, and the plan may end up publicly available, so realistic beats aspirational.
A rare piece of harmonization (with a catch). Provinces are aligning on a single material-reporting framework starting report year 2027, based on this year’s sales data. The upside is that every province will report against the same categories. The catch is that harmonization raises granularity to 64 material categories, splitting many previously grouped materials apart. HDPE bottles into coloured/opaque, other HDPE packaging, and natural HDPE; paper laminates into separate streams; and so on. Expect heavier reliance on supplier composition data to calculate the more detailed weights.
The provincial reporting deadline was May 31, but late filing is still possible across all provinces, including Quebec, where ÉEQ has added a new IC&I component on its portal.
The FPR is the first program in Canada with a national mandate designed to give a single, unified picture of all plastic placed on the Canadian market, rather than what’s collected province by province.
Phase 1 – no pause, no delay. The three broad categories (packaging; single-use/disposable plastic products; electronic and electrical equipment) and the residential scope are unchanged. The one change is the reporting year: producers now report full calendar-year 2025 data, due September 29, 2026. It still covers primary and secondary packaging, and the 1,000 kg threshold is measured Canada-wide, not by province. Once your total crosses it, you report.
Phases 2 & 3 – paused, not cancelled. ECCC has confirmed a delay, and the move into the IC&I stream is not happening this year. This is a timing shift, not a cancellation. ECCC is expected to publish guidance and a confirmed timeline over the summer, with Phases 2 and 3 likely combined into one wave bringing in resin manufacturers, pallet producers, plastic converters, service providers (including IC&I), and end-of-life reporting.
Treat any specific Phase 2/3 reporting years as provisional until ECCC’s summer guidance is published.
The delay is a planning window, not a reason to wait. FPR’s resin-level data needs overlap heavily with California’s SB 54 and Europe’s PPWR, so the same supplier data, ERP integration (legacy systems through to SAP), and resin databases can serve multiple regimes. Build the data foundation and traceability now, and FPR readiness becomes a cross-jurisdiction asset instead of a year-end scramble.
The common thread across every segment: these obligations share more underlying data than they appear to. FPR and SB 54’s plastic-component requirements overlap; DRS and recycled-content reporting already hold packaging data you can reuse for EPR. Woven together, the redundant effort shrinks.
That’s also an organizational problem, not just a reporting one, getting packaging, finance, marketing, operations, and sustainability pointed in the same direction is half the battle. Handled well, EPR shifts from a cost driver and distraction into a strategic initiative with a defensible ROI.
Our approach is simple: evaluate, engage, execute, and become a trusted extension of your sustainability team across US and Canadian reporting, fee mitigation, PRO selection, packaging transformation, and readiness assessments.
Below are some of the frequently asked questions from the webinar
There’s no direct financial penalty today. CAA intends to use an ecomodulation bonus/malus approach — fee reductions for progress, fee increases for inaction. After the August 1 plans are collected, CAA will assess the aggregate, and if the totals fall short, producers can expect to be asked to revise and resubmit. The details are still being worked out.
Likely yes. The US generally cares about where you sell, not where you’re based. If your brand is on the product and you sell into one of the seven EPR states, producer obligations typically apply. A good first step is an obligation assessment to confirm scope before you act.
For provincial EPR, generally yes. Most provinces have a single PRO and registration is required. Ontario is the exception, allowing competition (five PROs) and even self-operation, though that’s rarely practical. (Note: the federal FPR is direct reporting with no PRO.)
Not yet. Some late-payment penalties have appeared, but no state has penalized a producer for late reporting. Oregon is the likeliest first mover, with daily fines and ultimately packaging bans for refusal to comply written into its rules.
It varies widely. California offers compostability as a parallel path to recyclability, but with stringent certification criteria. In Canada it’s exempt in Ontario but obligated in other provinces, and in all cases only counts if certified to recognized standards
They run in parallel. FPR is a federal data-gathering program under CEPA; provincial EPR programs carry the financial obligations (per-tonne fees that fund recycling). They’re reported separately, and the new harmonized 64-category provincial framework (report year 2027) is a distinct exercise again.
Interested in learning more? Connect with our experts using the form below to learn how we can help.
