Per-pound fee
Weighted across published OR + CO schedules
Multilayer flexible
$0.86/lb
Paper Tube Co.
8¢/lb
Quantify the EPR fee arbitrage
See what your packaging
actually costs in fees.
A 90-second comparison between your current rigid plastic, multilayer flexible, or polycoated packaging and an equivalent Paper Tube Co. paper tube alternative — built on Oregon and Colorado’s published 2026 producer-fee schedules.
Inputs
Your packaging today.
Current material
Pick the closest match to what your packaging looks like today.
Annual unit volume
1.0M units
10K100M
How many primary packaging units you ship per year.
Unit weight
12 g
5 g500 g
Paper Tube Co. equivalent: 18 g.
Sales into EPR-active states
60%
0%100%
California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington.
Estimated annual EPR fee reduction
$12,336
Annual savings by switching from your current packaging to a Paper Tube Co. equivalent — based on published 2026 state fee schedules.
Current annual fees
$13,605
Paper Tube alternative
$1,270
5-year cumulative savings
$60,357
Year-1 exposure by state
Why the gap exists
Four reasons paper tubes price below
every alternative.
Recyclability rate
Real-world MRF processability
Multilayer flexible
1 – 2%
Paper Tube Co.
69 – 96%
Mixed-resin films can’t be processed by curbside MRFs. GreenBlue / SPC 2023 flexible-film recovery report.
Eco-modulation tier
Where the material sits in 2026 schedules
Multilayer flexible
Top-tier penalty in every published schedule — 102¢/lb in Oregon, 74¢/lb in Colorado. Among the highest-priced packaging formats.
Paper Tube Co.
Lowest-fee tier in every published schedule — 8¢/lb in Oregon and Colorado. Same line item as consumer corrugated.
5-year fee trajectory
Direction of travel under projected rollout
Multilayer flexible
Increasing
Paper Tube Co.
Stable
What’s driving the gap
Most of your exposure comes from Multilayer flexible fees in Colorado. Switching to Paper Tube Co. tubes drops the per-pound fee from published high-tier rates to the bottom of every state’s schedule (paperboard at 8¢/lb in both Oregon and Colorado). Across a 5-year window with more states publishing schedules, that gap compounds.
5-year projection
The gap widens as more states publish.
Each year, additional states bring their fee schedules online. The projection applies 80% of Oregon’s published schedule to newly-enacting states until they publish their own.
Total 5-year savings
$60,357
Year-1 vs. Year-5 gap growth
-3%
Projection assumes one additional state enacts EPR per year. The ramp and the 80% Oregon-relative fee scaling are both adjustable in the methodology page.
Take this to your team
Get the 6-page PDF report — forward it to procurement and sustainability.
Every number cited. Every assumption listed. Built to survive a procurement-team review.