2025 ICPHSO Annual Meeting and Training Symposium

Creating safer consumer products is a noble pursuit bestowing benefits to society and makes business sense because it reduces potential health risks; the risk of legal liability; the risk of product recalls and the attendant costs and reputational damage; and the risk of product failure. From a health risk perspective, potential adverse health effects are evaluated throughout the lifecycle of a product:

•From the early development stage when considering the product’s ingredients and formulation
•To the post-market stage when the product is in use by consumers.
This guidance is provided by various jurisdictions and industry groups. From a human factors or user experience perspective, one and the same iterative formative testing processes can be leveraged to:
•Decrease product risk
•Improve usability
•Enhance user experience.

The FDA’s human factors guidance provides a blueprint for a process that could be translated to the consumer product world.

Consumers and municipalities are poorly equipped to deal with the types and volume of waste that is generated when products and packaging have reached their end of life. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations/programs are one of the solutions that many countries globally are turning toward to better manage this problem.

When retailers, brands, and manufactures are assigned responsibility to fund and engage in management of these wastes, recycling can increase, while reducing resource consumption and emissions.

EPR is a timely topic, given it has become more active with EPR laws passed in 5 states recently on packaging and many others having legislative activity, while an EPR law for apparel/textile has been signed by the governor of California in the fall of 2024.

The intent of this session is to: raise awareness of this important type of regulation/program, help attendees get a better idea of how EPR may be applicable to them, provide some visibility into future regulations, and share ideas about how to start addressing these requirements.

The panel will share their knowledge, perspectives, and insights from their different position in the product life cycle, within a major retailer that must comply with many of these regulations (Canadian Tire), and skilled service provider focusing on EPR support (Accerio).

This session will give an overview of:

1. How EPR programs are generally set up / who is responsible for what actions / how funding
by obligated parties connects to the volume and type of product sales
2. Why they are beneficial and support circularity and sustainability
3. What are some of the existing EPR programs related to consumer products in the US and
Canada – an overview of this information has been compiled in a few slides to ease of
sharing, along with some additional resources
4. What is on the horizon in the U.S. and Canada? EPR for apparel?
5. Insights from the EU on EPR – can it affect North American companies?

In addition to helping attendees better understand how EPR programs work and how the landscape of regulations is changing the session will also:

6. Help them think about how to start addressing potential obligations
7. Provide insights from two companies dealing with these types of requirements from different
perspectives and how they work on compliance
8. Highlight the importance of data and provide recommendations
As part of the session, rapid polling will be conducted to gauge the attendees: familiarity with EPR,
level of existing activity in this topic, interest in EPR for specific product/packaging items, (and/or
other questions).

Each of the ICPHSO strategic committees will host one open meeting as a breakout session during the symposium, where attendees can attend and get first-hand insight and experience what the committees do and how they serve ICPHSO.  This also furthers our mission in preparation for the open call for volunteers to join the 2025 strategic committee groups that will be formed shortly after the symposium concludes. This will also present an opportunity to showcase one of our "member only" activities in the hopes of encouraging an interested non-member in joining ICPHSO to be eligible to serve on an open committee slot.

Changing consumer rights are impacting product recall implementation but are they also changing outcomes? Panellists will discuss how they are seeing approaches to recalls and consumer remedies change to meet new legislative expectations and the impact that they may or may not be seeing.