Plastic production has increased exponentially over the last few decades, fueling a plastic pollution crisis that has impacted every part of our planet with over 11 million metric tons of plastic entering our ocean globally every year. The surge in single-use plastic for packaging and food ware, driven by cheaply available fossil fuel feedstocks, has overrun our already struggling recycling system in the U.S., increasing pollution, costs and community impacts. While banning problematic and unnecessary single-use plastics can have a significant impact on reducing ocean plastic pollution,1 a comprehensive approach is needed to tackle this crisis, including making less plastic, better management of the plastics we do use and remediation of plastics already in the environment. Extended producer responsibility (EPR) policies provide an opportunity to finally control a previously unregulated problem in the U.S.: single-use packaging. By holding producers financially accountable for the entire lifecycle of their product and for working with other producers to meet environmental outcomes set by the legislature, EPR policies provide a critical opportunity for oversight, transparency and regulation of packaging and single-use plastics. In recent years, five U.S. states have passed EPR policies to reduce pollution from plastic and other packaging waste.