What SPDC is, and why we point people at it
The Sustainable Packaging Data Council publishes a free US EPR data-requirements template covering California, Colorado and Oregon — backed by Specright, Lorax EPI, Sonoco, Tyson and Costco. It is good. Its real contribution is that it tells you which fields to fill: it turns “what do the states even want from us?” into a concrete column list your packaging, sales, and finance people can divide up. That alone ends the blank-page phase of an EPR program, and it costs nothing.
If a vendor’s pitch depends on you not finding out that this template exists, that tells you something about the vendor. So: it exists, it is free, start there.
Template scope and backer list: SPDC’s public materials — retrieved 2026-07-29. We are independent of SPDC and its backers; if we have described the template inaccurately, tell us and we will fix it.
When the template alone is enough
Honestly: for a real slice of producers, it is. The template plus ordinary care is likely to get you there when most of the following are true:
- A small, stable packaging catalogue — few configurations, redesigns are rare, and last year’s answers mostly survive to this year.
- Weights you already hold documents for — supplier specs or scale records exist in a folder someone can actually find, and nobody has to guess a number to finish a row.
- Simple attribution — one obligated entity, no private-label or associated-producer questions, and state-level sales splits your ERP can produce without heroics.
- One accountable owner — a person who fills it, keeps it, and can explain any cell in it a year later.
If the template alone gets you where you need to be, use it — we would rather tell you that than sell around it.
What a filled template is not
A template is a list of questions. A supply report you can defend is a record of answers with their sources. The gap between those two shows up in four specific places:
- A source document behind every weight. The template gives you a cell for “grams”; it does not remember which spec sheet, scale record, or supplier declaration produced the number — or flag that two of them disagree.
- Component-level BOM lineage. Fee math runs on components, not SKU totals. When a carton, insert, film, or label changes mid-year, a flat sheet has no way to show which configurations, in which months, carried which components. Our component-level data guide covers what that structure looks like.
- State sales allocation. Obligation follows where covered material was supplied. Units by state, year, and channel is a data pipeline with its own sources — not a column you fill once.
- Correction-regime survivability. The template has no version history, no sealed state, and no correction chain — and the correction regime is exactly where that absence gets expensive, as the next section quotes.
The correction regime is where a bare spreadsheet breaks
These clauses are quoted from Circular Action Alliance’s own reporting policy — the same ones we quote on our homepage validation section — and each is a concrete thing a filled-in template, on its own, has to survive:
| What CAA policy says | What that asks of your template |
|---|---|
| “Each Producer Report is eligible for only one Adjustment request per Producer Report per Report Year” (§3.12) | You get one correction. To spend it well you need to know exactly what changed and why — which a spreadsheet with overwritten cells cannot tell you. |
| “If the Participant does not provide the requested documentation within 30 calendar days, the request will be closed and the Adjustment rejected” (§3.12) | Thirty calendar days to produce the documents behind numbers you may have entered up to two years earlier. If the template row does not point at its source, this clock is the problem. |
| “CAA may require an independent third-party review at the Participant’s expense before approving the Adjustment” (§3.12) | An unsubstantiated position can convert into an audit bill you pay. Substantiation is what keeps this clause from firing — and substantiation is precisely what a bare template does not hold. |
Quoted from the CAA Reporting Policy, Version 1 (June 2025), published by Circular Action Alliance — retrieved 2026-07-28. Read it yourself; we would rather you did.
The honest conclusion
Use the template either way. If your portfolio is simple enough that the filled template plus a tidy folder of specs answers “which document says so?” for every number — you are done, and you did it for free. Where we earn our keep is the rest: a source document behind every weight, component-level lineage, state sales allocation with provenance, and a sealed, correction-chained record that can answer a validation request in a week instead of a month.
Not sure which side of the line you are on? The 2026 status guide maps where producers stand, and the Status & Exposure Scanner runs in your browser — nothing uploads.