EPR has been around a long time. It is the concept that the original producer of a material bears responsibility for it beyond post-consumer use. In the European Union, it is a much more mature concept and business norm. In the United States, EPR is viewed chiefly as a funding mechanism to support recycling programs by shifting the responsibility to pay for these programs from municipal and other public sources to private product producers. EPR embeds a version of "polluter pays." Many U.S. organizations have actively espoused EPR for more than 15 years, but industry pushback has slowed adoption of mandated EPR programs like those recently enacted in Maine and Oregon.