Theme 3 — Scope and obligations¶

Before anything can be charged, someone must decide what counts as packaging, who counts as the producer, and which streams are in. These definitional questions look technical and are not: they determine who pays, how much, and whether a national supply chain faces one rulebook or seven.

This theme covers the boundary problems — small-producer thresholds, printed paper, compostables and hard-to-recycle formats — where most compliance cost and most political conflict actually sit.

The articles¶

3.1

What counts as packaging, and who is the producer?¶

The two definitions everything else rests on, and why the producer definition determines whether liability lands on the party that chose the packaging or the party that merely shipped it.

3.2

How are small producers treated?¶

Thresholds set on revenue, tonnage or both, differing across every jurisdiction — the single largest source of definitional compliance burden, and the basis of an equal-protection claim in the Oregon litigation.

3.3

Which waste streams are covered?¶

Residential collection is the near-universal starting point. Quebec is the only North American jurisdiction with a legislated pathway past it.

3.4

Should printed paper be in the program?¶

Five different answers across seven US states, in-kind newspaper arrangements in British Columbia, and a paper industry that opposes inclusion on the ground that it already recycles.

3.5

Compostable and hard-to-recycle packaging ¶

The categories that defeat the recycling model — where fee modulation, format bans and source reduction meet, and where the difficult fraction driving performance plateaus actually lives.

What this theme establishes¶

Definitional divergence, not cost-coverage percentage, is what makes multi-jurisdiction compliance expensive.
Small-producer thresholds concentrate the burden on mid-sized firms — a documented litigation theory.
The hard-to-recycle fraction is where the performance plateau originates.

Part of The Packaging EPR Library. Method and source rules are set out under Sources and method.