A Model Worth Following: Vermont Keeps Petroleum Products & Packaging on Its Own EPR Pathway

Vermont just did something other states drafting HHW EPR legislation should take note of: it amended its HHW law to allow PROs to manage independent categories of waste products AND packaging in the same law.

With Governor Phil Scott’s signature, H.915 amends Vermont’s Household Hazardous Waste EPR law to allow producers of certain HHW product categories to file an independent PRO plan with the option to include packaging. Too often, HHW EPR is treated as a waste management cost-offset tool or a way for states to share the burden of running county HHW facilities. But Vermont’s amendment reflects a different understanding: that EPR works best when it keeps products from becoming waste in the first place.

For lubricant and petroleum product producers, this is a meaningful fix. It gives industry the flexibility and control to build a program designed around recovery rather than disposal. It also reduces costs by avoiding the legislated markup for a state-run program and puts control where it belongs: with the producers who understand the product and the recovery chain.

“Vermont’s decision confirms what we’ve already seen play out in Canada. Producer responsibility works best when the program is built around the material, not forced to fit everything into the same system,” said David Lawes, CEO, Interchange 360. “By keeping petroleum and automotive products and packaging on its own track, Vermont gave our industry a pathway that actually matches how these products are made, used, and recovered.”

None of this happened by accident. The National Lubricant Container Recycling Coalition (NLCRC) has spent considerable effort working with legislators, in regulatory comment periods, and most recently in testimony before Vermont’s Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy, making the case that lubricant products and packaging collection and recycling programs should be integrated and require its own compliance pathway to reduce curbside contamination and ensure recycling.

“NLCRC has advocated for this approach for years, and Vermont just proved why it matters,” said Tristan Steichen, Executive Director, NLCRC. “Giving industry a pathway built around the uniqueness of its category and products, not in spite of them, is how we increase recycling rates and achieve better environmental outcomes.”

Vermont didn’t have to get this right. States working through EPR legislation face real pressure to fold every material into a single program for the sake of cost saving and administrative simplicity. Vermont’s amendment creates space for something more ambitious: a producer-led program designed to interrupt the linear product-to-waste pathway, not just manage what’s left at the end of it.

As more states take up EPR in the years ahead, the question they should be asking isn’t just how to share the cost of managing waste. It’s how to build systems that prevent these products from becoming waste in the first place. By giving industry the flexibility and control to design a program built around the full product cycle, Vermont’s approach is a standard worth following.