Oregon’s EPR Law: What Cannabis Businesses Need to Know

Oregon’s new Extended Producer Responsibility law is here, and if you sell packaged products in Oregon, it is something you need to understand.

This isn’t intended to be a compliance guide. Oregon’s EPR system is complicated, and there are still questions I’m working to get answered. This is my attempt to explain what I know, what I don’t know, and why cannabis businesses should start paying attention.

I’ve reached out to the Circular Action Alliance, or CAA, with some of the questions that remain unclear to me. I haven’t received those answers yet, but there is already plenty I can explain.

What Is EPR?

Extended Producer Responsibility is based on a pretty simple idea: the companies putting packaging into the market should share responsibility for what happens to that packaging after the consumer is finished with it.

Oregon’s Recycling Modernization Act created an EPR system for packaging, paper and food serviceware. Producers of covered products help fund the recycling system through fees paid to a Producer Responsibility Organization. In Oregon, that organization is CAA.

The amount a producer pays can depend on what material they use and how much of it they put into the Oregon market.

That last part is important.

Weight matters.

Who Has to Participate?

Let’s start with the simple numbers.

If you put less than one metric ton of covered products into Oregon in a year, you may qualify for Oregon’s small-producer exemption.

One metric ton is approximately 2,204.6 pounds.

There is also an exemption for producers with less than $5 million in global gross revenue.

Those are probably the two numbers most small cannabis businesses should know first: one metric ton and $5 million.

There are other opportunities for exemption depending on the producer and the products involved, so this isn’t the complete test. If you’re close to one of these thresholds or aren’t sure whether you’re considered the producer, it’s worth looking more closely at the rules.

For everyone else, the next question becomes how much covered packaging you’re actually putting into the Oregon market.

And that’s where the weight of cannabis packaging starts to matter.

What Does This Actually Look Like for Cannabis Packaging?

This is where things get interesting.

Let’s compare two common packages used for one ounce of cannabis.

One of P3’s one-ounce Mylar bags weighs approximately 0.02375 pounds.

One of P3’s 90-dram polypropylene pop-tops weighs approximately 0.0864 pounds.

That means the rigid polypropylene package weighs about 3.6 times as much as the Mylar bag.

If these were the only covered products a producer put into the Oregon market, it would take approximately:

92,800 one-ounce Mylar bags to reach one metric ton.

Compared with:

25,500 90-dram polypropylene pop-tops to reach one metric ton.

That is a pretty substantial difference.

A producer using lightweight flexible packaging can put considerably more individual packages into the Oregon market before reaching the same total packaging weight.

Again, this is only an illustration. A producer’s threshold is based on its covered products as a whole, not one individual package.

Then There Are the Fees

CAA’s final 2026 Oregon fee schedule lists plastic laminates and other flexible plastic packaging at $1.02 per pound.

At that rate, P3’s 0.02375-pound one-ounce Mylar bag would generate an EPR material fee of approximately:

2.4 cents per bag.

Polypropylene gets more complicated because CAA has several different categories for rigid PP.

One category, “PP other rigid containers, cups, plates and trays,” currently carries a fee of $0.62 per pound.

I’ve asked CAA for clarification about exactly where P3’s pop-top containers belong within its material classifications and have not received an answer yet. I don’t want to present my interpretation as a final determination.

But if the 90-dram pop-top is classified in that $0.62-per-pound category, its 0.0864-pound weight would produce an EPR material fee of approximately:

5.4 cents per container.

That creates an interesting result.

The Mylar itself is assessed at a much higher rate per pound, $1.02 compared with $0.62 in this example. But the Mylar package uses so much less material that its fee per individual package is less than half as much.

This is one of the things I think cannabis businesses need to understand about EPR.

It isn’t simply a question of whether something is recyclable.

Material choice, package weight, classification and end-of-life options all matter.

But Where Does the Money Go?

This is where I have a bigger question about how EPR will work for cannabis packaging.

Cannabis producers are going to pay fees on packaging they put into the Oregon market. The idea is that those dollars help build and support a better recycling system.

But what happens when the existing municipal recycling system doesn’t have a practical way to process the package being assessed?

Small-format polypropylene cannabis packaging is a good example. The material itself has value and can be recycled. I know that because I’ve been doing it for years. But these small containers are not something Oregon’s normal curbside recycling infrastructure is designed to effectively recover and process.

Mylar presents an even bigger challenge.

Multilayer flexible packaging is lightweight and efficient, but at this time there is no reasonable, economically viable municipal recycling pathway for the massive amount of Mylar waste being generated by the cannabis industry.

Yet both materials can generate EPR fees.

That leads to a question I think cannabis producers deserve an answer to:

Where is that money going?

If cannabis producers are paying specifically because of the packaging they put into Oregon, I would like to see some of that funding directed toward systems capable of actually recovering those materials.

The goal shouldn’t simply be to assess a fee on difficult-to-recycle packaging. The goal should be to use those dollars to help solve the problem.

For small-format PP, that means supporting collection, sorting and processing systems that can capture the material before it enters the municipal waste stream.

For Mylar, it means developing the collection volume, processing infrastructure and end markets necessary to create a real pathway for a material that currently has very few options.

Those are difficult problems.

But that’s exactly what EPR funding should help solve.

Where Does Glass Fit In?

Glass is different.

Unlike small-format PP and multilayer flexible packaging, glass jars already have a pathway through Oregon’s municipal recycling system. A consumer can put an acceptable glass jar into the appropriate local recycling stream and the material can be recovered.

But I think we can do better than that.

I’ve been collecting, cleaning and putting glass cannabis jars back into circulation in Oregon for years.

That experience has taught me something important.

A package that weighs more isn’t necessarily worse if it can be used again.

Glass is heavy, and in a weight-based EPR system that matters. But crushing a perfectly usable glass jar and turning it back into raw material shouldn’t necessarily be our first choice when that same jar can be cleaned, inspected and used again.

Reuse preserves the package instead of just recovering the material.

That’s why I believe some EPR funding should be directed toward proven reuse systems.

If Oregon is going to collect fees on glass packaging, there is an opportunity to use some of those dollars to expand systems that prevent those packages from becoming recycling in the first place.

I’ve already demonstrated that glass cannabis jar reuse can work in Oregon. The challenge is getting enough jars back and creating the infrastructure to process them efficiently at a larger scale.

EPR could help solve that problem.

The best piece of packaging to recycle may be the one you don’t have to recycle yet.

Recycling on Paper Versus Recycling in Practice

This is probably the part of EPR that interests me the most.

For nearly a decade, I’ve been working on what happens to cannabis packaging after it leaves the dispensary.

Through P3, I’ve collected polypropylene from across Oregon. I’ve sorted it, cleaned it, processed it and developed downstream markets for it. I’ve also built a system to recover and reuse certain glass cannabis jars.

That experience has shown me that there can be a big difference between calling something recyclable and actually recovering it.

Mylar is a perfect example.

Flexible packaging has become increasingly popular in Oregon cannabis because it is inexpensive, lightweight and efficient to transport. Those are real advantages, and EPR’s weight-based structure gives lightweight packaging another economic advantage.

But its end-of-life story remains much more difficult.

I’m working on developing a viable recovery system for multilayer flexible packaging because I believe this material is going to become an increasingly important part of the cannabis waste stream. But at this time there exists no reasonable, economically viable method of processing the massive amount of waste it will produce.

EPR makes that work even more relevant.

I Still Have Questions

There are portions of Oregon’s new system that I don’t think are clear enough yet.

Who exactly becomes the obligated producer in the diverse system we have for packaging cannabis?

How should specific cannabis packages be classified within CAA’s material categories?

How are established recovery programs considered?

How does reuse affect producer obligations and fees?

And if cannabis producers are paying EPR fees on materials that Oregon’s municipal system cannot currently process effectively, how much of that money will actually be invested in solving those specific waste streams?

I’ve asked some of these questions and I’m waiting for answers.

When I get them, I’ll share what I learn.

That’s part of why I’m writing this now. Businesses shouldn’t have to become experts in Oregon recycling policy just to understand what a package might cost them.

EPR Is Going to Change Packaging Decisions

For years, the cannabis industry has largely evaluated packaging based on a few basic questions.

What does it cost?

Does it meet OLCC requirements?

Does it protect the product?

Does it look good on the shelf?

Now there is another question:

What happens to it when we’re done with it?

EPR puts a price on that question.

I think that’s ultimately a good thing.

But putting a price on waste only works if those dollars eventually help solve the waste problem.

As the system develops, I think it’s important to make sure we’re measuring the right things and investing in the right solutions. Weight matters. Recyclability matters. Actual recovery matters. Reuse matters.

And sometimes those things point in different directions.

Oregon is beginning a major experiment in how we pay for the materials we put into our waste stream. Cannabis businesses are going to be part of it whether we’re ready or not.

My goal is to understand the system, share what I’m learning, and keep working toward packaging solutions that make sense both economically and environmentally.

There are still questions to answer.

But at least now I know which questions I need to be asking.