I’ve recently been seeing EPR with respect to packaging pop up more frequently in the many newsletters and information sources I subscribe to. It’s been a topic of discussion for some time, but regulatory implementations have been disparate and often slow to be actually adopted. What once was somewhat of a theoretical sustainability goal seems to have shifted into an active regulatory reality, with stakeholders often identifying issues with the various implementations.

For example, in Europe, the Textile Pro Forum says an analysis showed significant differences in registration, reporting and invoicing standards for textile producers across the European continent. Its research revealed that each country had adopted its own approach, leading to a fragmented regulatory landscape. This created somewhat of a compliance nightmare for cross-border and ecommerce operations. This research resulted in the EU’s blanket harmonization which takes effect in August, designed to resolve these conflicts.

In the U.S., there is no Federal EPR law, leaving the states to fend for themselves. Seven states now enforce comprehensive packaging EPR laws: Maine, Oregon, Colorado, California, Minnesota, Maryland, and Washington. May 2026 marked the first simultaneous multi-state compliance deadline in history, forcing companies to report highly granular material data across state lines.