New Council Unveils Templates that Harmonize EPR Data Reporting
A new coalition of brands, retailers, and partners called the Sustainable Packaging Data Council is working to create standardized data templates for easier EPR reporting across relevant states, and eventually, across global markets.
An excerpt from the Sustainable Packaging Data Council’s Oregon EPR reporting template, showing product-level attributes such as product code, brand owner, and hazardous material status. Fields are marked as required or recommended to guide brand owners through compliance.
Specright
Faced with fragmented state-by-state EPR reporting, brand owners and retailers including Costco, Tyson Foods, and Central Garden & Pet have joined forces to create the Sustainable Packaging Data Council. The group, supported by suppliers and technology partners, aims to standardize reporting data through new templates. The Council tapped Specright to serve as its host and technology partner, and to build templates for member brands to use to harmonize this data. Technology partners, like Lorax EPI and Trayak, sustainable packaging non-profits like How2Recycle, plus industry analysts and academic programs like Michigan State University, are also involved. Formed by brands including Costco, Tyson Foods, and Central Garden & Pet, the Sustainable Packaging Data Council helps brand owners streamline Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) reporting through standardized data templates.Specright
Why the need for EPR data harmonization? Brands and CPGs—any entity deemed to be a producer, really—are challenged with collecting and reporting on sustainability data to meet evolving regulatory requirements. These exist both in the U.S. and globally in various forms, but Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) reporting to states like Oregon, Colorado, and California is the most pressing for most brand owners here in the states. Often, the challenge stems from not having a clear understanding of reporting requirements or full access to packaging data, particularly from suppliers.Brand owner Central Garden & Pet is a founding member of the Council. Central Garden & Pet
Consider Central Garden & Pet, the brand owner behind many popular lawn, garden, pet care, and pet food brands. The company recently submitted its initial Oregon and Colorado reports on time with all the required data and is currently working on the California EPR report. The company expects to submit California’s report prior to the deadline, as well.
The good news? Paul Gray, director of continuous improvement at Central Garden & Pet, says that the reporting for Oregon and Colorado has been very similar with only minor differences in the material type descriptions. Each state’s requirements are slightly different and required the brand to compile the data specifically for the individual states report, but at least the data requirements are basically the same, he says.Paul Gray, director of continuous improvement at Central Garden & PetCentral Garden & Pet
The bad news? It was a fragmented process in the first attempt. That’s why it was good timing when Gray, as he was gathering the data for the initial report, heard about the newly forming Sustainability Council.
“I thought it would be a great opportunity to talk to other groups to determine and develop the best practice to manage our data moving forward so we could do so efficiently and correctly. During the initial reporting, we learned that standardizing the data in our system is key to being able to compile the data and generate the report easily and efficiently,” Gray says.
“The second report was smoother than the first. We will continue to standardize the specification data moving forward as we develop new packaging and enter the data into Specright to make the reporting easier. This will also help us identify areas where we can improve our packaging by reducing the amount of packaging or by changing to a more sustainable material…” he continues. “Harmonizing the data requirements will help streamline the reporting. If the material type was standard, we could utilize that in our specification management system and run the reports directly from that system.”
The central mission of the Sustainable Packaging Data Council is to create templates of data requirements for reporting entities (brand owners) that will guide the packaging supply chain in meeting expectations and enhancing awareness and quality of information for EPR.
“Templates will be a key tool that we will use moving forward when we are developing new packaging to ensure that we have the correct data in the correct format for reporting and gather additional data to help us improve our packaging,” Gray says.
More to come
The Council has been meeting weekly in 2025 for collaborative discussions and ultimately aligning on its first deliverable—reporting attributes for Oregon’s EPR reporting requirements, which is now in a downloadable template. The Council will continue to develop future templates for other U.S.-based EPR regulations, as well as align and share best practices around data collection. Brands like Central Garden & Pet helped steer these templates to be useful for brand owners.
“We’ve modified the templates that we used for some of the initial data collection after working with the council… During the development of the initial template, I wanted to help make sure that we were identifying the packaging specification that were required for reporting and those that are required for our internal use so I could utilize the templates moving forward with the confidence that we were gather all the information required,” Gray says. “At Central Garden and Pet, we have a Core Team with a cross-functional representation from each one of our business units (BU) that is responsible for managing and gathering their packaging specifications. Each BU packaging leader will be utilizing the data templates and specification requirements moving forward for new packaging specifications and for any changes or updates to existing specs.”
What are the next steps for the Sustainable Packaging Data Council? Spokespeople say that all released templates will be evaluated annually as new resources are released by the Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO), who is the Circular Action Alliance (CAA) in this case, to ensure the Council remains compliant. Together, Specright and the Council are looking to release California and Colorado templates by the end of the year, aiming to create a workstream of global companies for a Packaging and Packaging Waste Reduction (the EU’s PPWR) workstream next year.
“Sustainability initiatives are more than checking a regulatory box. There is a shared responsibility of all companies to do better for the planet, and we’re establishing this council to empower them to do just that,” says Matthew Wright, founder and executive chairman, Specright. “Through this collaborative effort, companies cannot only work together on this common goal but ultimately will spend less time chasing data and more time innovating and driving true impact.”
Adds Caroline DeLoach, director of sustainability, Atlantic Packaging, “Being part of the Sustainable Packaging Data Council has proven the power of involving the whole value chain. As we discussed the minutiae of the data requirements for EPR reporting, we drilled down into what data are truly necessary for effective EPR in a way that could only be done by representatives across the entire supply chain. If we can help others collect more complete and better data, we will necessarily make packaging EPR more effective.”
Ultimately, all stakeholders that constitute the Council agree that standardized data means less time chasing numbers, more time improving packaging. PW
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Formed by brands including Costco, Tyson Foods, and Central Garden & Pet, the Sustainable Packaging Data Council helps brand owners streamline Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) reporting through standardized data templates.Specright
Brand owner Central Garden & Pet is a founding member of the Council. Central Garden & Pet
Paul Gray, director of continuous improvement at Central Garden & PetCentral Garden & Pet
