Extended producer responsibility in the US: what the WWF-advised economic analysis shows

Extended producer responsibility (EPR) has been standard practice in Europe for decades, but in the United States it is only now taking shape. Since 2021, seven US states have adopted packaging EPR laws and more are preparing to follow – each with its own definitions, timelines and reporting rules. A 66-page technical report published by RTI International in September 2026 asks what the US economy would gain if these rules were brought together under a single national framework. The study was funded by SC Johnson, with WWF (World Wildlife Fund) providing technical advice.

In short: According to RTI’s model, a harmonised national framework for extended producer responsibility could add $111 billion in economic value and $9.5 billion in state and local tax revenue across the United States over ten years. Municipal waste management costs could fall by 49–53 per cent, and a large producer’s annual administrative costs could drop from $8.3 million to $4.3 million if it did not have to comply with 50 different state regimes.

What is extended producer responsibility, and why does it matter in the US now?

The principle is simple: whoever puts packaging on the market should also pay for what happens to it after use. EPR shifts the financial and operational burden of collecting, sorting, reusing and recycling packaging waste from local governments and taxpayers to producers. Producers usually pay fees through a producer responsibility organisation (PRO), which funds collection, infrastructure, consumer education and the development of markets for recycled materials.

A key feature is eco-modulation: fees are not flat but depend on how recyclable a package is, how much recycled content it contains, and whether it can be reused. Better design means lower fees.

What makes the US different is the absence of federal rules, so every state is going its own way. The report’s question is therefore not whether to have EPR, but whether to build a coordinated system or a patchwork of differing definitions, reporting obligations and fee structures. Europe is facing a similar shift, as PPWR rewrites the economics of recycling.

What exactly did RTI model?

It is worth being clear: the report does not evaluate or endorse any specific bill. It models a hypothetical national framework covering consumer packaging and paper, under which:

• producers fund the full net cost of collection, sorting, reuse, recycling, consumer education, enforcement and end-market development;
• each state has a single PRO operating under nationally consistent rules;
• eco-modulated fees encourage less packaging and better recyclability.

The model’s central assumption is that EPR raises each state’s recycling rate by 30 percentage points over ten years. This figure is grounded in international experience, where EPR has delivered gains of roughly 15 to 50 percentage points. Germany’s recycling rate rose by 39 points between 1991 and 2016, while some material streams in Spain and Portugal improved by more than 50 points.

Half-price waste bills? What municipalities could gain

The report calculated the budget impact of EPR for two very different US communities.

Thornton, a fast-growing city of 149,000 in the Denver metro area, recycles just 12 per cent of its waste. With EPR, it could save $2.8 million a year by 2036 – 53 per cent of its waste management spending.

Miami County, Indiana, is a rural county of 40,000 with a stagnant population and only five drop-off recycling sites. Its annual savings could reach $700,000, or 49 per cent of costs.

The savings come from two sources: producers take over recycling costs, and higher recycling rates mean less landfill and lower disposal fees. In Thornton the two effects contribute roughly equally.

The authors are careful, though: this is not an automatic tax cut. It gives local governments fiscal flexibility – to delay fee increases, improve services or redirect funds. Where collection, hauling and disposal are bought as a single bundled contract, savings may not show up proportionally.

Jobs from the collection truck to the lab

The most striking figures concern employment. According to the model, the first five years of infrastructure build-out (new sorting facilities, equipment, collection assets and education) would support 275,500 job-years in total. A job-year means one year of employment, so two six-month contracts equal one job-year.

Once the system is running, operations would require around 36,200 permanent direct jobs in collection, sorting and processing. Each of these supports roughly two more jobs in supply chains and through workers’ spending, bringing the total to about 108,000. These workers would earn $9.3 billion a year, while states and localities would collect up to $1.3 billion in annual tax revenue.

Most of the new jobs are hands-on: refuse and recycling collectors and truck drivers would account for 40 per cent of employment, and together with labourers and material movers for nearly half of all new positions. Most require a high school diploma and on-the-job training, with typical pay between $25,000 and $50,000 a year. Smaller numbers of mechanics, logisticians and managers would also be needed.

Packaging innovation is a separate line. Nine large multinational food and beverage companies expect to spend $1–5 million a year on packaging changes driven by EPR. Extrapolated across the sector, that exceeds $8 billion a year, and even a single year of such investment would support 79,900 job-years – from materials scientists and packaging engineers to laboratories and service businesses. For a sense of how producers are redesigning packaging, see our piece on six trends from Billerud’s 2026 report.

Fifty rulebooks or one: the cost of fragmentation

Perhaps the report’s most important message concerns harmonisation. According to RTI’s survey, an average large food and beverage producer’s annual administrative costs would be:

• about $4.3 million under one uniform national framework,
• $5.1 million if ten dominant state models emerge,
• $8.3 million under 50 entirely different state regimes.

That is a 48 per cent difference between the harmonised and fully fragmented scenarios. Each additional state with unique rules would cost a producer $167,000 instead of $86,000 – almost double. The largest items are legal interpretation, data collection and reporting, and repeated PRO registration. The cost of understanding new rules alone jumps from $7,000 to $36,000 when a state uses its own definitions.

These figures exclude EPR fees themselves and cover only compliance overhead. That this burden is real is clear from how loudly European packaging companies have complained about regulatory chaos and bureaucracy in the first month of PPWR.

Reuse: value created through services

The report devotes a chapter to reuse, framing it not just as a waste-reduction tool but as an economic service: collection, washing, transport, redistribution and coordination all create work and revenue.

Closed-loop settings such as stadiums and entertainment venues lead the way. According to Bold Reuse, 71 per cent of venues using reusable service ware reported measurable cost savings, some programmes generated up to $500,000 in sponsorship value, and return rates exceeded 70 per cent everywhere.

In Petaluma, California, 30 restaurants ran a shared cup system for three months. With no deposits or registration, customers returned more than 220,000 cups through over 60 bins, and the project beat its break-even point. Schools are harder: ten Californian elementary schools switched with a $50,000 grant, but washing costs of $150,000 a year are a long-term strain. Our report on how few customers know whether they pay for disposable cups shows why price signals matter for reuse too.

Rural collection and the PET bottle market

Around 20 per cent of Americans live in rural areas, where recycling is often available only at drop-off sites. Using Miami County as an example, the report estimates that a 30-point increase would require curbside collection for 80 per cent of households, a $1.1 million investment, and would raise the value of local hauling contracts from $303,000 to $877,000 a year. If curbside expansion is paired with education, covering 56 per cent of households is enough. Communication pays: according to the report, $10 per household spent on education can raise household recycling by 40 per cent.

For PET bottles, the US recycling rate was 30.2 per cent in 2024, and average recycled content in bottles stood at 15.9 per cent. A record 23 per cent of US and Canadian rPET supply now comes from imports. If EPR lifted collection to around 60 per cent, it would nearly double collected volumes and could create a more stable domestic feedstock supply. The authors warn, however, that more collection without processing capacity achieves nothing.

State case studies: from Colorado to West Virginia

Alongside national figures, the report shows what a 30-point improvement would mean in five states. Estimates for the steady-state operating phase:

• Colorado (14% to 44%): about 640 ongoing direct jobs, $205 million a year in economic contribution, $13 million in tax revenue.
• Georgia (13% to 43%): about 1,200 direct jobs, $341 million a year, $21 million in tax revenue.
• Virginia (15% to 45%): about 940 direct jobs, $279 million a year, $19 million in tax revenue.
• Texas (17% to 47%): about 3,360 direct jobs, $1.1 billion a year, $96 million in tax revenue.
• West Virginia (10% to 40%): about 190 direct jobs, $42 million a year, $3 million in tax revenue.

The differences are telling. Texas, with its large population and existing manufacturing base, would benefit most, while in sparsely populated West Virginia small facilities sometimes store lightweight plastics for a year or more before they have a full truckload. For Colorado, the authors stress that the state’s own EPR programme is already under way, so the figures are not an assessment of it.

Who pays? The report’s limitations

The report does not claim EPR is free. Part of producers’ new costs may be passed on to consumers, depending on market conditions. The estimates cited suggest the effect is modest: one US study found household grocery spending would rise by only 0.7 per cent even if packaging prices doubled, and UK government modelling projects a 0.3 per cent price increase for the lowest-income households.

The methodological limits matter too. The results are projections for a hypothetical scenario, not forecasts. Waste generation data rely on EPA’s 2018 estimates, and producer cost figures are based on self-reported data from only nine large companies, so they cannot be generalised to smaller firms. The study was funded by a major consumer goods company, although RTI conducted the analysis as an independent research partner. The authors also note that packaging optimisation, reuse uptake and material reduction were not quantified.

What can Europe and Hungary learn from this?

Hungary has run its own EPR system since 1 July 2023, built on a single concessionaire model, so fragmentation shows up there in a different form. Across the EU, PPWR – applicable since 12 August 2026 – is pushing member states towards harmonisation, as we explained in our article on Rabobank’s analysis of the packaging transition.

Two lessons from the US report travel well. First, producer money creates real economic value only when it flows transparently into collection infrastructure, public education and domestic processing capacity. Second, predictable rules are valuable in their own right: every extra definition and reporting format is a cost that someone ultimately pays. The US is also wrestling with outdated rules in other waste streams, as our coverage of three House bills on battery recycling shows.

The core message of this WWF-advised analysis is that producer responsibility is more than a cost transfer: designed well, it creates jobs, local contracts and steadier markets for secondary materials. Poorly coordinated, part of the money goes into paperwork instead of waste.

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FAQ on the US extended producer responsibility analysis

What does extended producer responsibility mean?

Extended producer responsibility means that the producers who place packaging on the market pay for managing it as waste, instead of local governments and taxpayers. Producers pay fees through a producer responsibility organisation, which funds collection, sorting, recycling, consumer education and the development of markets for recycled materials.

Who produced the WWF-linked US EPR analysis?

The analysis was carried out by the independent research institute RTI International and published in September 2026. It was funded by SC Johnson, with WWF providing technical advice. The report does not assess a specific bill; it models the economic effects of a hypothetical, nationally harmonised packaging EPR framework for the United States.

How much could municipalities save under EPR?

According to the report’s two case studies, waste management spending could fall by 49–53 per cent. Urban Thornton could save $2.8 million a year and rural Miami County $700,000. The savings are not an automatic tax cut but give local governments fiscal flexibility to delay fee increases, improve services or redirect funds.

How many jobs could a harmonised US EPR system create?

The model estimates that investment in the first five years would support 275,500 job-years. Once operational, the system would sustain around 36,200 permanent direct jobs in collection, sorting and processing, each supporting roughly two more in supply chains and services. Nearly half of the new jobs would be collectors, drivers and material movers.

Why is fragmented state regulation more expensive for producers?

RTI’s survey found that a large food producer’s annual administrative costs would be $4.3 million under uniform national rules but $8.3 million under 50 different state regimes. The extra cost comes from legal interpretation, differing data collection and reporting formats, and repeated registrations. These figures do not even include the EPR fees themselves.

Will extended producer responsibility make products more expensive?

Partly, because some of producers’ costs may be passed on to consumers. The estimates cited in the report suggest a modest effect: one US study found household grocery spending would rise by only 0.7 per cent even if packaging prices doubled, while UK government modelling projects a 0.3 per cent price increase.

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Source:

RTI International: Economic Analysis of a U.S. National Extended Producer Responsibility Framework – Technical Report, September 2026. The report is available on the WWF website.