As usual, the western states lead the race for green innovations, but this time they’re targeting product design. California, Oregon and Washington have introduced legislation to encourage more sustainable product design to reform waste management, following an international movement known as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) or Product Stewardship.

EPR policies force manufacturers to internalize the product lifecycle impacts in the product prices. This “cradle to cradle” product management approach creates one law to establish EPR as policy and gives state government the authority to address multiple products over time.

The legislation requires manufacturers to be financially or physically responsible for products after their useful life. They can do this by accepting spent products and reusing them, by recycling them, or by delegating the responsibility to a third-party organization.

Several provinces in Canada, including British Columbia, already have EPR regulations in place. California introduced the California Product Stewardship Act while our neighbors to the north created the Canada-wide Action Plan for Extended Producer Responsibility, which makes sustainable packaging a first priority. Similarly, Oregon introduced a product stewardship bill that will initially focus on better design for mercury-containing lights and rechargeable batteries.

“California, Oregon and Canada are trail-blazers in establishing comprehensive EPR legislation,” said Bill Sheehan, executive director of the Product Policy Institute, which heavily influenced local government Councils in California, Vermont and Texas. “These laws will relieve the financial burden on local governments of managing difficult and toxic products and will stimulate manufacturers to design better products.”

This approach wisely pushes product manufacturers to design in a sustainable manner from the concept stages, which has the possibility of significantly streamlining waste management without adding in complex efforts at the end just to make up for shortsighted design.

“The primary responsibility should rest with producers,” said Heidi Sanborn, Executive Director of the California Product Stewardship Council. “It is far less expensive to design a product and packaging to reduce waste than it is to create expensive end-of-life recycling and disposal systems that are funded by the taxpayers and garbage ratepayers.”

Some sectors have already been doing this for years – such as Hewlett Packard, which recycles ink cartridges, and Patagonia, which recycles used Capilene clothing. But it’s about time the trend caught on more widely. Government shouldn’t be forced to deal with waste when much of it can be addressed and corrected from the beginning stages of manufacturing in the private industry.