Growing levels of waste and pollution, paired with increasing burdens on taxpayers to address envi ronmental problems, have spurned policymakers in the US and abroad to encourage producers to be responsible, either financially or operationally, for the end-life of their products. • Extended producer responsibility is a policy approach that could shape incentives to encourage recycled materials and help shift waste management costs from taxpayers to the producers of waste. • Low-rate taxes on unrecycled raw materials like virgin plastics, coupled with enabling innovation in recycling, would encourage a circular economy—a model of economic consumption and production that involves reusing and recycling materials for as long as possible to reduce waste. • Policy options that include recycled-based manufacturing standards, non-neutral burdens on products and materials, and exclusive focus on one link in the circular economy chain are suboptimal policies that threaten to create counterproductive environmental outcomes. • Conformity across states would minimize compliance costs and maximize environmental outcomes. • Soundly designed policies could help enable a circular economy, achieve environmental goals, and ring economic growth from more efficient recycling and competitive waste disposal industries.