- EPR makes producers, importers and brand owners responsible for the end-of-life of what they put on the market.
- Your obligation is what you place on the market multiplied by a target percentage, fulfilled through collection, recycling and credits.
- The same recycling data that proves EPR fulfilment also feeds your ESG circularity disclosures - one ledger, two regimes.
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) shifts the cost and accountability of end-of-life waste from municipalities to the businesses that put products and packaging on the market. Regimes now span the EU, US states, the UK and Asia, covering plastic packaging, e-waste, batteries, tyres and more.
Who is liable
Producers, importers and brand owners are liable. The precise definition varies by jurisdiction, but the party that first places an item on the market generally carries the obligation - even if someone else manufactured it.
How obligations are calculated
The mechanics are consistent across regimes: you report what you place on the market by material category, and a target percentage is applied to derive your collection or recycling obligation. Miss it, and you face shortfall penalties or must buy your way to compliance.
Fulfilment, credits and returns
You meet the obligation through actual collection and recycling, and by purchasing and retiring recycling credits issued by recyclers or producer responsibility organisations. At year end, you file a return showing placed-on-market quantities, the obligation, and how it was fulfilled - with evidence.
The recycling and material-flow data that fulfils your EPR obligation is exactly what your ESG circularity disclosures (BRSR, CSRD E5, and others) ask for. Run them in separate spreadsheets and you do the work twice. Run them on one ledger and EPR fulfilment auto-populates your ESG report.
How to run it cleanly
RakuOps manages EPR as a running ledger: hold your registrations and renewals, record placed-on-market quantities, let the platform compute the obligation, and track fulfilment in real time against a mass-balance material-flow ledger and a credit register. When the return is due, it is a generated document - and the same data flows straight into your ESG disclosures.