9 min read · May 2026
Most companies enter EPR analysis with the same assumption: responsibility belongs to someone else. The factory made the packaging. The supplier provided it. The importer brought it in. Amazon handles fulfillment. The distributor manages in-state sales.
In many cases, that assumption is wrong — and the entity that assumed it was protected is the one the statutory hierarchy reaches first. The producer is not always the company closest to the packaging. It is the company most reachable by the law.
Packaging EPR laws do not assign responsibility based on operational logic or commercial intuition. They assign it through a statutory producer hierarchy designed to land on a commercially reachable entity inside the supply chain. For importers, private-label brands, DTC operators, and Amazon sellers, that hierarchy frequently lands in places they did not anticipate.
All seven active EPR states work the same way at the core: for each layer of covered packaging, the law points to one obligated producer. The product package and the shipping box can have different producers. The hierarchy exists to resolve producer responsibility when multiple parties participate in the same supply chain.
The hierarchy turns on brand ownership, licensing, who directs the manufacturing, and where each party is located — not on who physically made the package. It asks one question: which entity, progressing from top to bottom, is commercially reachable and legally identifiable within the jurisdiction?
Producer responsibility is not assigned by intuition. It is assigned by hierarchy.
The importer tier is the most commercially significant fallback rule in packaging EPR — and the one most companies in the middle of the supply chain fail to account for.
Importer liability activates when no qualifying domestic brand owner or licensee exists. For foreign brands without a U.S. commercial presence, that condition is met immediately. In Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington, the importer becomes the obligated producer once no one higher up the ladder is in the United States — Maine, Minnesota and Washington put it on the importer of record specifically. California has no importer step: if no brand owner or licensee is "in the state", the producer is whoever first sells or distributes the product in California.
Importers who register with a PRO while a U.S.-based brand owner exists may be reporting and paying fees for obligations that legally belong to that brand owner. Conversely, importers who assume the foreign brand is responsible — and don't register — may find themselves as the obligated producer the moment an enforcement agency applies the statutory hierarchy.
Private-label products — where a retailer's or platform's brand is applied to a product manufactured by a third party — squarely activate the brand-owner tier of the hierarchy. Because the private-label brand owner's mark appears on the packaging, that entity is usually the producer, whoever manufactured the physical product. The license is the thing to check. In Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington, a manufacturer licensed to make and sell under another company's brand comes before the brand owner. Oregon reaches the brand owner through its rule on directing manufacturing, Colorado through a rule that lists the brand owner first, and California through its in-state test.
In the typical arrangement, the contract manufacturer that made the item bears no EPR obligation for it. The brand whose name is on the label does.
This creates a mirror-image problem for suppliers into private-label programs: the supplier is not the producer for EPR purposes, but it may be the entity that holds the packaging weight data, the material composition records, and the supplier specifications that the actual producer — the retailer brand — needs to comply. The data lives in the wrong company.
Companies supplying into private-label programs should obtain written confirmation that the private-label brand owner has registered with the applicable PROs.
Does Amazon Handle EPR Compliance for FBA Sellers?
No — not for product packaging. Amazon handles logistics. That is not the same thing as assuming statutory producer responsibility. Amazon's membership as a CAA founding member does not satisfy an individual seller's registration, reporting, or fee obligations for the packaging the seller places on its products. Amazon FBA sellers remain individually responsible for their product packaging under all seven state EPR programs.
Six states — Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington — split e-commerce packaging into two categories: product packaging (the packaging that contains or protects the product) and shipping packaging (the packaging used to deliver the item to the consumer). These are separate obligations that can land on different parties in the same transaction.
Under FBA, the brand owner is the producer of the product packaging — the packaging that arrives at Amazon's fulfillment center with the product. Amazon may be interpreted as the producer of the shipping packaging under Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington law, which assign shipping-packaging responsibility to the person that packages the item for the consumer — Oregon says "packages and ships", Colorado "packages or ships", and Maine frames it as the packaging that is not used to directly contain or protect the product, assigned to "a person that packages the item for delivery, presentation or distribution to the consumer".
This split has not been resolved through enforcement action as of May 2026. But it means FBA sellers face a narrower obligation than often assumed — product packaging — while simultaneously facing the same registration, reporting, and fee obligations as any other brand owner for that product packaging. Amazon's logistics role does not transfer the product-packaging obligation.
One important exception: sellers using Amazon's "Ships in Own Container" (SIOC) program — where the product ships in its original packaging without an additional Amazon box — collapse both categories into one. The brand owner is fully responsible for all covered packaging associated with that shipment.
The producer hierarchy determines who is legally responsible. It does not determine who has the data required to comply.
That gap is where the operational risk concentrates.
Core Insight
The company legally responsible for EPR compliance is often not the company that controls the packaging data. The factory controls material composition. The importer controls customs entry records. Amazon controls outbound shipping packaging. The distributor controls state sales visibility. The brand owner controls the trademark. No single entity controls the complete reporting dataset — and EPR reporting requires all of it.
An importer that becomes the obligated producer under a foreign brand may have no access to packaging specifications, component weights, PCR content percentages, or historical supply volumes. Those records are held by the overseas manufacturer. The importer can register with the PRO, but it cannot generate an accurate annual supply report without the underlying packaging data — which the manufacturer has no legal obligation to provide.
A private-label brand owner may have the trademark and the sales data, but the packaging specs are held by a contract manufacturer that sources packaging independently. In the typical arrangement, the brand owner is the obligated producer and the contract manufacturer is not.
The data lives in the wrong company.
The scenario most likely to produce unintended noncompliance is one where multiple parties in the same supply chain each believe another entity is responsible. The importer assumes the foreign brand is handling it. The distributor assumes the importer registered. The retailer assumes the distributor confirmed compliance. No one registers. The product enters the state without an obligated producer on record.
State enforcement agencies do not resolve that ambiguity in advance.
EPR law does not ask who manufactured the packaging. It asks which commercially reachable entity in the supply chain should bear the obligation — and it answers that question through a hierarchy, not a negotiation.
Contractual assignment — where parties agree in writing that one entity will assume another's EPR obligations — is available in Maine, Minnesota and Washington. In each, the assignment only takes effect if the assignee registers with the program and the assignment is certified to it in writing. If the assignee registers after a reporting deadline, the original obligated producer may have already incurred a violation. Compliance teams should require PRO registration confirmation as a contractual closing condition, not a subsequent covenant.
Before registering with a PRO — or before concluding that another entity in your supply chain is responsible — work through these questions for each covered product line:
The companies at highest operational risk are those that have resolved the first question — "who is the producer?" — in their own favor, without working through the rest. Producer status is not a conclusion reached once. It is an ongoing supply-chain mapping exercise that should be revisited whenever commercial structure, import arrangements, or brand ownership changes.
Before you register — or assume another entity in your supply chain is handling compliance — determine where producer responsibility actually lands in your commercial structure.
Start a Free Compliance Status CheckThis article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Producer hierarchy determinations are fact-specific and depend on the laws of each applicable state; consult qualified legal counsel before making compliance decisions. Orbitlex is not a law firm.