Extended Product Responsibility (EPR) has been the focus of the policy research of the Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies for the past four years. In November 1994 the Center hosted the first U.S. symposium on EPR held in Washington, D.C., which brought together researchers and policy analysts to discuss how EPR, which has emerged in the European context, might apply in the United States. In 1995 the President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD) took up the issue and went on to endorse the general principle of Extended Product Responsibility and to recommend adoption of a voluntary system of EPR. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Solid Waste has been supporting the EPR research of the Center for Clean Products for the past two years and has been cooperating in evaluating and presenting the findings of this research. The focus of this report is on the implementation of EPR by U.S. companies. What has been striking to us and our EPA sponsors from the beginning of this research is the degree to which U.S. companies have been implementing EPR without government mandates. We believe that this finding and the case studies contained in the report are important news for the business community. The report showcases successful applications of EPR by U.S. companies responding to a variety of business drivers, including cost savings, increased customer loyalty, product innovation, and green image building. These case studies are presented to encourage other companies to consider voluntary adoption of EPR as a business strategy. The case studies in the report were chosen based upon our awareness of company EPR initiatives through literature reports and through the extensive network of contacts of the Center for Clean Products and our collaborators in this project. We have also included other case studies that surfaced through the planning for the President’s Council on Sustainable Development workshop mentioned below. We attempted to reflect examples from a variety of industry sectors and which included a variety of methods of implementing EPR. There are undoubtedly more examples that would have merited inclusion in this report, and the exclusion of any example does not imply lack of merit. We will continue to collect information about other examples and will look for opportunities to make additional case studies widely available. We believe that the publication of as many case studies as possible will further the understanding and practice of EPR. Besides introducing the general principle of EPR to a broader audience, this report briefly highlights a few of the more innovative policy initiatives from other countries. The reader should keep in mind that EPR-based policies are evolving rapidly in Europe and Japan, so that any discussion of these policies will inevitably be a snapshot of the situation at the time the research is done. The Center has prepared detailed discussions of EPR policies in Europe, Canada, and Japan, which will be published separately.