Environmental outcomes often associated with Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) include: • Outcome 1: increases in recycling rates. • Outcome 2: increases in recycled content usage. • Outcome 3: increases in design-for-recycling practices. • Outcome 4: increases in the market value of collected packaging waste. These four outcomes are interrelated. For instance, it is reasonable to assume that increases in design-for-recycling practices (outcome 3) will facilitate increases in recycling rates (outcome 1), which should increase the supply of recycled content, thereby facilitating producers’ usage of recycled content (outcome 2), which in turn can be linked to the market value of collected packaging waste (outcome 4). Given these interrelations, EPR programs vary in the directness with which they intend to address each outcome. Some programs may have elements directly aimed at improving several of these outcomes, while other programs may intend for these outcomes to be indirectly addressed via the interrelations. European policy has referenced EPR as a mechanism for member states to implement the polluter pays principle since the introduction of the Waste Framework Directive (2008/98/EC).1 While EPR has been required in Europe for waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), end -of-life vehicles (ELV), and batteries and accumulators (B&A) there was never an obligation to set up EPR schemes for packaging until 2018, when Directive 2018/8522, which amends Article 7 of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive, made it clear that EPR schemes must be established for all packaging, stating that: By end of 2024, EU countries should ensure that producer responsibility schemes are established for all packaging that will cover all necessary costs of collection, sorting, and recycling. The schemes should help incentivize packaging that is designed, produced, and commercialized in a way that promotes packaging reuse or high-quality recycling and minimizes the impact of packaging and packaging waste on the environment. Despite there being no requirement currently in place, several countries have implemented EPR for packaging. The most established programs are found in Germany, France and Italy and it is these programs for which secondary research has been carried out to provide a view on the extent to which EPR has contributed to the four outcomes above. When assessing the impacts of EPR on outcome 1, increases in recycling rate it is important to understand that recycling under European law does not include energy recovery, recycling is defined in European law as: ‘recycling’ means any recovery operation by which waste materials are reprocessed into products, materials or substances whether for the original or other purposes. It includes the reprocessing of organic material but does not include energy recovery and the reprocessing into materials that are to be used as fuels or for backfilling operations”.