From producer responsibility to consumer action: The power of behavior change

You might have seen the news that California wants fashion companies to pay for the mountains of textile waste their clothes create every year. We’re not talking about waste generated during manufacturing. Under the new law, by 2030, manufacturers and retailers will be responsible for the costs of collecting, sorting, repairing, and recycling your clothes after you’re done wearing them. Right now, we the consumers (and our local governments) are the ones paying for all those discarded clothes to take up space in landfills. 

Similar programs are emerging for packaging and single-use food-service ware in California and electric car batteries in states like New Jersey. Others, including mattresses and paint, have been operating for years. The West Coast in particular is at the vanguard of this movement. 

These programs represent practices known as product stewardship and extended producer responsibility, EPR for short. People may not recognize those terms, but they don’t need to. What matters is that they know what to do with their leftover paint, used mattresses, or unwanted clothing—and have an easy way to do it.

What are product stewardship and extended producer responsibility? 

Every product has a life cycle. It gets designed, manufactured, purchased, used, and eventually discarded. And at every stage, there are opportunities to conserve resources, reduce waste, and protect people and the environment. 

Product stewardship is about taking responsibility for a product’s environmental, health, and safety impacts throughout its life—not just when it’s time to throw it away. 

Extended producer responsibility (EPR) takes that idea a step further, making producers legally responsible for managing their products after consumers are done with them, including the associated costs. 

In a nutshell: an industry’s responsibility for its products shouldn’t end when they’re sold.

And that’s a pretty remarkable shift. For decades, the responsibility for dealing with discarded products has fallen largely on consumers and local governments. EPR changes that equation. It creates a way for producers, governments, retailers, and communities to share responsibility for what happens to products after we’re done using them. It can even create incentives for companies to design products that last longer and are easier to repair or recycle. Instead of accepting waste as inevitable, we’re building systems to do something about it.

EPR programs typically emerge from state legislation establishing a policy for producers’ responsibilities. A producer responsibility organization—often a nonprofit—then administers the program under state oversight. This can include promoting the program to consumers, informing them about drop-off locations and ways to extend the lives of their purchases, and partnering with retailers that might act as purchasing and drop-off points. 

Some programs are funded through fees attached to purchases, helping cover the costs of later collection and recycling. For example, the PaintCare fee is applied to the purchase price of new paint and may vary by state and container size.

Sometimes a program is limited to one state; sometimes a program operates in several states, each with its own ecosystem, partners, audiences, and best practices.

Sound complex? It is, and we’re only scratching the surface. We’ve worked with clients in the product stewardship and EPR space for years, and can tell you: when you see how these programs benefit individuals and communities, this complexity is worth it. 

What product stewardship makes possible 

Our client PaintCare, for example, embodies product stewardship and EPR in its mission to help people reduce paint waste, reuse what they can, and recycle the rest. Our PaintCare campaigns help DIYers and professionals alike get the most out of their gallons through painting hacks, project suggestions, and nudges to find a drop-off site near them. 

The results have been undeniable: across PaintCare’s programs, more than 92 million gallons of leftover paint, stain, and varnish have been collected. (To see how we apply behavior change principles to recycling and sustainability campaigns, check out our earlier blog post.) 

Our client MED-Project, meanwhile, provides communities with safe and convenient ways to dispose of their unwanted or expired household medications and sharps, through pharmacy drop-boxes, free mail-back packages, and community take-back events. It operates in multiple states, assisting general populations and historically underserved communities. We helped MED-Project communicate with a unified voice across markets while remaining flexible to the needs and regulatory requirements of individual jurisdictions. Our work is regularly evaluated by third-party surveys, and those surveys have shown high awareness of MED-Project among our target audiences.

Across the broader recycling landscape, the results are encouraging. A 2023 report showed that EPR programs were associated with dramatically higher recycling rates for packaging (including plastic, glass, and metal) and printed paper in seven international jurisdictions. The analysis also projected significant improvements for six U.S. states with the adoption of similar programs.

What does it take to market product stewardship programs effectively? 

For consumers, participation should be simple: know what to do, where to go, and how to take part. Making it that simple, however, takes a lot of work behind the scenes.

As a marketing agency with years of experience in product stewardship and EPR, we’ve learned how to navigate some particularly complex challenges: 

• Navigating different requirements across states. Our EPR clients operate in multiple states, each with its own regulations, needs, and requirements. And outreach and education aren’t always optional marketing activities; they’re often part of a program’s legal obligations. Our responsibility is to plan precisely and deliver the required communications, because failure to meet those obligations can result in penalties. We also work to make those communications as effective as possible. If TV advertising is mandated, for example, we use our research and expertise to determine which formats meet the requirements and will best reach the intended audience. 
• Translating complex regulations into communications people understand. Our EPR clients rely on us to turn complex policies and legislative language into messaging that resonates with target audiences. For example, asking consumers to minimize their product waste might translate better as “Use up what you have.” One of our strategists has an extensive background working in the legislature, so she brings firsthand expertise in how government regulation and mass communication intersect. We also use creative testing to understand which messages and approaches are not only accurate, but clear, persuasive, and motivating.
• Understanding what motivates different audiences. The behavior change principles we apply to our campaigns get customized by market. A benefit that gets Oregonians going may not really move Californians. We adjust our content and strategy accordingly. 
• Engaging the partners who make participation possible. Retail partners are often the heart of an EPR campaign, because they interact with customers purchasing products and often serve as drop-off points. It’s a bustling ecosystem to coordinate, but, on the bright side, driving community involvement and co-hosting drop-off events can be pretty fun! 
• Using research to understand and improve performance. We analyze survey results—sometimes years of results—to understand how people are disposing of items, what messaging is persuasive and memorable, and how we can make participation easier. In tandem with larger consumer and media industry research, these findings inform our strategy.

Being a marketing agency for EPR and product stewardship programs is clearly a niche—but it’s a meaningful one, and one that we love. It brings together two things we care deeply about: driving positive behavior change and making a tangible difference for people, communities, and the environment. That this niche is getting wider every year is good news for all of us. 

But establishing responsibility is only the beginning. These programs also depend on people knowing they exist, understanding how they work, and participating in them. That’s why we get in the weeds, acting as a bridge between complex regulations, program requirements, and the straightforward messages that resonate in people’s lives.

When it all comes together, we’re changing more than individual behaviors. We’re helping make reuse, recycling, and responsible product management part of everyday life—and changing what we expect from the products we make, buy, and use.