In Europe, Amazon handles your packaging EPR. In the US, it handles only its own — and if your brand is on the box, you're the producer.
Amazon ships your products.
It does not become your producer.
Many Amazon sellers assume that using Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) means Amazon handles their packaging Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) obligations under California SB 54. It doesn't. Not in the United States.
If you sell into California — or Oregon, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, or Washington — and your brand is on the package, you have your own producer obligations under state packaging EPR laws. Amazon's role in the transaction, even when Amazon warehouses, packs, and ships the product for you, does not transfer those obligations to Amazon.
This article walks through why. It's not a criticism of Amazon; Amazon operates within its own legal boundaries. But those boundaries are drawn very differently in the US than in Europe, and that difference is why the assumption you started with isn't safe here.
The assumption comes from somewhere real. If you sell on Amazon.fr, Amazon.de, or Amazon.es, Amazon collects your EPR registration numbers, checks them against national registries, and — in Germany — can be legally prohibited from letting your listings go live if you're not registered.
That's not an Amazon policy choice. It's what the law requires the marketplace to do.
Germany is the sharpest example. Under the Packaging Act (VerpackG) § 7(7), a marketplace may not let packaging be listed for sale unless its producer is participating in a licensed recycling system (VerpackG § 7):
Operators of an electronic marketplace may not enable the offering of system-participation-subject packaging for sale.
Amazon validates your LUCID registration number with the ZSVR (the German packaging register) before your listings go live. Non-compliant listings are deactivated.
France and Spain run parallel schemes. France's Environmental Code Article L541-10-9 (created by the AGEC Law in 2020) makes the marketplace responsible for either verifying seller EPR identifiers from ADEME — or, if the seller lacks one, taking on the producer's own EPR obligations. Spain's Royal Decree 1055/2022 Article 2(t) makes the platform “subsidiarily” the producer when foreign packaged goods enter without a designated representative (BOE — RD 1055/2022). Both countries offer Amazon Pay-on-Behalf for sellers who need it.
The mechanism is the same in all three: the marketplace is a legal chokepoint. Non-compliant sellers can't sell. Amazon's role isn't optional — it's forced by statute.
That's the world you were assuming exists in the US. It doesn't.
The United States has no federal packaging EPR law. Each state does its own. But every state so far has drawn the marketplace's role more narrowly than Europe does — and California SB 54 is the clearest example.
California's Public Resources Code § 42041(ae)(2) is direct (PRC § 42041):
A person who sells covered material as a third-party seller using an online marketplace… shall be considered the retailer or wholesaler for purposes of such transactions. The owner or operator of the online marketplace shall not be considered the retailer or wholesaler for such sales.
Translated: if you're the third-party seller, you're the retailer for SB 54 purposes. Amazon isn't. This is what people call the “marketplace shield” — the statute explicitly puts the compliance obligation on the seller, not the platform.
In other words, California deliberately separates Amazon's own packaging obligations from yours. Amazon has real EPR obligations in California — for its private-label goods and its own outbound shipping supplies. Those obligations don't sweep in your product's packaging just because your product happens to be sold through Amazon.
There's a nuance to the shield, though. § 42041(ae)(3) has conditions. The marketplace only qualifies as an “online marketplace” (and therefore only enjoys the shield) if it meets several tests, including one worth reading carefully — § 42041(ae)(3)(C):
Except as provided by subparagraph (E), the owner or operator of the platform does not directly or indirectly control the covered material used in packaging and shipping of a consumer product in this state.
Read that condition alongside what FBA actually does. Amazon supplies the shipping box for FBA orders. Amazon's warehouses put your product into that box. Whether that supply of the shipping packaging counts as “directly or indirectly controlling the covered material used in packaging and shipping” is a genuinely open question. The statute doesn't answer it. CalRecycle hasn't published guidance on it. And there's no case law yet.
That question doesn't change your obligation for the product's own packaging — that stays yours regardless. But it does mean the marketplace shield's own logic is less watertight than it looks at first, and it's one of several reasons producers should not be relying on Amazon to shield them from anything.
The practical takeaway is simple. Under US state EPR laws, you are on your own for the packaging your brand ships in. No marketplace is going to catch it for you. And unlike Europe, no US state is currently forcing the marketplace to try.
If not Amazon, then who? California's PRC § 42041(w) sets a three-tier definition. The first tier is the one that catches most Amazon sellers (PRC § 42041):
“Producer” means a person who manufactures a product that uses covered material and who owns or is the licensee of the brand or trademark under which the product is used in a commercial enterprise, sold, offered for sale, or distributed in the state.
If no one qualifies at that first tier — for instance, because the brand owner is outside California — the definition falls back to the brand owner or exclusive licensee (tier two), and then to whoever sells or distributes the product into the state (tier three).
Here's how that maps to typical Amazon seller archetypes:
You have your own brand (private-label seller, DTC brand extending onto Amazon, most FBA sellers with proprietary SKUs). You're a producer under tier one or tier two, depending on where you're based. Your brand or trademark is on the package. That's what the state cares about. You have producer obligations under California SB 54 and under every other state's packaging EPR law that follows the same brand-owner-first pattern.
You resell other brands (arbitrage, wholesale-to-Amazon). You're generally not the producer for those products. The brand owner is. If they haven't registered, that's their non-compliance problem, not yours. But your own private-label SKUs (if you have any) are still your obligation.
You import a foreign brand (whether under your own name or the brand's). You very likely land at tier two or tier three. If the foreign brand owner isn't in California and hasn't designated an exclusive US licensee, then whoever is selling or distributing the product into the state — that's often you, the importer — becomes the producer.
FBA versus FBM makes no difference to any of this. The producer definition attaches to whose brand is on the package. It does not attach to who physically warehouses or ships the product. An FBA seller and an FBM seller with identical product packaging have identical producer obligations. Fulfillment channel changes shipping logistics; it does not change compliance obligations.
That's for your product's own packaging. The outer shipping box is a slightly different story, and it's worth a short note before moving on.
Five states — Oregon, Colorado, Minnesota, Washington, and Maryland — split the producer role for e-commerce shipments into two parts. The inner packaging (the box or bag your product actually sits in) stays with the brand owner. The outer shipping box gets assigned to whoever packages and ships the item.
That means for FBA orders, the outer Amazon-branded box is not your responsibility in those five states. It's Amazon's, because Amazon is the party physically packaging and shipping the item.
Oregon's version is representative. ORS 459A.866(1)(b)(B) states that “the producer of packaging used to ship the item to a consumer is the person that packages and ships the item to the consumer.” Minnesota, Washington, and Maryland use slightly different wording (“packages the item to be shipped”) but arrive at the same rule. Colorado's phrasing (“packages or ships”) is a bit broader.
California SB 54 does not split shipping packaging from product packaging in the same way. In California, the analysis defaults back to § 42041's producer hierarchy — which brings the marketplace shield question from §2 back into play.
Contractual reassignment note. In Minnesota, Washington, and Maryland, the shipping-box producer role can be contractually reassigned to a party that joins a PRO (Producer Responsibility Organization). If Amazon ever chose to formally take on that responsibility in those states, it could — but it hasn't yet, and there's no publicly stated timeline.
For now, in every state that has this rule, your product's own packaging is still yours. The outer box is Amazon's problem — but only in five states, and only for the shipping packaging specifically.
If your gross sales into California were less than $1 million last calendar year, you may qualify as a “small producer” and be exempt from most SB 54 requirements (PRC § 42060(a)(5)(A)).
Two things about that word “may.”
First, the exemption is not self-executing. You don't get it by being small. You get it by registering with CalRecycle through the PEPRS system, submitting an exemption application, providing revenue records, and describing your business — and then having CalRecycle approve it. Approval is discretionary; the department can decline even if you're under the threshold. Approved exemptions are valid for two years, renewable (14 CCR § 18980.5.2).
Second, even an exempt producer still has to be inside CalRecycle's system to have that status. There's no version of this where an Amazon seller “just isn't in scope because they're small.” You're either registered as an exempt small producer, or registered as a regular producer, or non-compliant. There isn't a fourth category.
One residual obligation the exemption does not cover: the 2032 recyclable and compostable design requirement under PRC § 42050(b) applies regardless of exemption status.
The practical takeaway: if you think you're under $1 million in California, you probably still need to be in CalRecycle's system. The exemption is a status you register for and defend on paper, not a size you happen to be.
Amazon sellers are not insulated from state enforcement simply because they sell through a marketplace. The shield explains why you rather than Amazon appear on any state's producer list — it does not remove your name from that list.
Oregon started first. On April 9, 2026, Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality published its first public list of non-compliant producers — roughly 250 companies named, including Yamaha Motor, Mercedes-Benz North America, Hobby Lobby, Papa John's, and Jack in the Box. Penalties can run up to $25,000 per day per violation, and the state's Department of Justice can seek sale prohibitions in extreme cases. The list is quarterly; more names will follow.
California's permanent SB 54 regulations became effective May 1, 2026. The registration deadline was June 1, 2026, and it has passed. CalRecycle's enforcement mechanism is Notice of Violation → 30-day cure period → penalties up to $50,000 per day per violation. As of mid-July 2026, no public list of California non-compliant producers has been published — but the department has the statutory authority to start any time.
Colorado's fee invoicing has been active since January 2026. No public non-compliance list yet, but the program is running.
The other four states (Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Washington) are staged behind. The pattern is the same across all seven: the deadlines are real, the enforcement mechanisms are statutory, and the assumption that “nobody's going to actually enforce this on Amazon sellers” is not one worth building your compliance strategy on.
Here's the fact worth watching. California's marketplace shield doesn't just have the control condition from §2. It also has § 42041(ae)(3)(E), which says the shield applies only if:
Third-party sellers agree, pursuant to the platform's terms and conditions or other enforceable agreement, that they will not use the platform to offer for sale, sell, or distribute into the state covered material that does not meet the requirements of this chapter.
Read that carefully. The shield requires Amazon (or any marketplace) to have contractual terms with third-party sellers requiring them to comply with SB 54. If Amazon ever wanted to convert that contractual language into an actual enforcement mechanism — collecting your registration number in Seller Central, validating it against CalRecycle, blocking non-compliant listings — the statutory hook is right there. It's the exact mechanism Amazon already runs in France, Germany, and Spain.
Nothing forces Amazon to do that in the US today. But the statute doesn't prevent it either. If enforcement pressure grows, or if Amazon decides marketplace liability outweighs the seller-experience cost, the switch can be flipped fast.
For now, the practical picture is simpler. In Europe, Amazon handles your packaging EPR. In the US, it handles only its own. You are the producer of your product's packaging, and no state agency is going to look at Amazon to find out who to send the letter to. They're going to look at whose name is on the box.
Producer status isn't something Amazon assigns. It's something the state assigns — to whoever's brand is on the package.
The producer question is the first one to answer. Once you know whether you're on the hook, and in which states, the rest of the compliance work becomes concrete.
In about five minutes, a free Compliance Status Check tells you which states you have producer obligations in, whether you qualify for the small-producer exemption, and roughly what the next steps look like.
Start a Free Compliance Status CheckIf you already know you're the producer and want to see the packaging-data problem that comes next, read the follow-up on how to pull state-level packaging data from Amazon reports.