This paper describes extended producer responsibility (EPR) and emerging approach to incentive-based environmental policy. Sometimes known as manufacturer take back or product stewardship, EPR imposes responsibility on producers for the environmental impact of products and materials throughout the product life cycle. Typically, EPR policies are enacted in order to facilitate high levels of recycling by tapping the expertise or financial resources of producer groups. More fundamentally, EPR attempts to internatlize externalities changing behavior of producers by tightening the link between product design and marketing decisions and waste management-related concerns. Extending responsibility of producers through take back requirements, financing obligations and related instruments relies on a product life cycle perspective on environmental management and represents a substantial change in environmental policy. This paper sketches some reaons why EPR may be preferable to a more orthodox, product life cycle stage-by-stage approach. Those reasons include a heightened concern abour resource scarcity and pollutant loadings as seen from a sustainability perspective, skepticism about consumer sovereignty and the ability of the market to respond to demand for greener products, a belief that EPR will promote environmentally-oriented technological change and the political impact of a dramatic assignment of environmental responsibilities.