Day Three Of The ICPHSO Symposium: Redefining Responsibility — Who Protects The Consumer In A Changing Marketplace?

Day three of the ICPHSO Annual Meeting & Training Symposium in Orlando, Florida brought another packed slate of sessions, and the Crowell team was present throughout to capture the day's key insights and conversations. Across panels spanning right-to-repair, online marketplace regulation, recall collaboration, and international risk assessment, a single urgent question surfaces: as products, supply chains, and consumer behaviors grow more complex, how do regulators, manufacturers, retailers, and platforms share — and sometimes contest — the responsibility for keeping consumers safe? Day three made clear that the answer increasingly demands cooperation, not just compliance.

Below is a closer look at select sessions from the day and the key takeaways that resonated with attendees.

Repair Reality Check: Safety and Consumer Rights in the Era of Right-to-Repair

As right-to-repair expands globally, it is reshaping product lifecycles, reducing waste, and redefining consumer expectations — but it is also introducing a new frontier of safety risks driven by unsafe repairs, uncertified replacement parts, and high-risk components like batteries. This growing landscape has drawn increased regulatory scrutiny from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and counterparts worldwide, including heightened examination of repairability claims and "easy to repair" marketing that may mislead consumers or encourage unsafe practices. This session convened compliance experts to provide practical, actionable steps and a concrete framework to help manufacturers, retailers, and other stakeholders strike the right balance between embracing repair rights and upholding product safety and performance standards — all while effectively managing enforcement risk.

Here is what product safety professionals need to know:

• Right-to-repair is no longer a policy debate — it is the law in a growing number of jurisdictions. The European Union's framework, now enshrined in EU Directive 2024/1799, has been in force since July 2024 and reflects a clear legislative priority: repair should come before replacement, product lifecycles should be extended, and waste should be reduced. Member states have until July 2026 to transpose the directive into national law, meaning compliance timelines are already running. Closer to home, roughly 25% of U.S. states have enacted their own right-to-repair laws, creating a patchwork of requirements that manufacturers cannot afford to ignore. For companies operating across borders, the takeaway is straightforward — product designs must be built to accommodate multi-jurisdictional repair requirements, or risk falling behind a regulatory curve that is only moving in one direction.
• Broader repair rights come with tradeoffs. Certain components may warrant exceptions to limit safety risks and reduce litigation exposure, and extensive third-party modifications can shift product identity and blur the boundaries of manufacturer responsibility. To manage these risks, manufacturers should study real-world repair behaviors and available tools and translate those findings into clear, technician-level repair manuals that meet standard documentation requirements and are designed to prevent injury when repairing.
• Repairability is a design requirement, not an afterthought. Right-to-repair obligations begin at the design stage, not when a product fails. Products should be built for easy disassembly, with repairs that are technically and legally feasible using everyday tools, at a reasonable cost and within a reasonable timeframe. Spare parts availability compounds the planning challenge: the EU requires parts availability for up to 10 years, while California mandates seven. For companies operating across these markets, inventory planning must begin at product launch — treating repairability as a design and supply chain priority from day one is now a legal imperative.

Unpacking EPR: What Every Brand Needs to Know

This session examined the rapidly evolving U.S. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) landscape, equipping brands with a practical understanding of what EPR compliance requires in 2026 — from reporting obligations and fee exposure to design impacts and enforcement risk, as well as practical guidance on managing baseline data expectations, closing supplier data gaps, and aligning packaging strategy with cost, compliance, and market access requirements.

Here is what product safety professionals need to know:

• EPR Compliance is no longer on the horizon — it is here. Right-to-repair obligations aside, 2026 marks the shift from EPR planning to active regulatory compliance. Companies must build robust data governance structures, assign executive-level ownership of EPR obligations, and ensure a defensible packaging contents analysis is in place. Looking ahead, EPR is expected to expand beyond packaging into textiles, embedded batteries, furniture, mattresses, car seats, and electronics — making early investment in compliance infrastructure a long-term strategic asset.
• Get your data house in order — before regulators come knocking. Baseline data collection is foundational to EPR compliance and fee estimation. Companies should be capturing material types, component weights, recyclability classifications, recycled content percentages, supplier documentation, and trace coatings, inks, and adhesives. Gaps in supplier data are common and must be proactively managed to avoid under-reporting risks.
• Budget for real costs and prepare for state-by-state variability.EPR fees — including administrative fees payable to implementing agencies and any applicable plastic-related commitments — can reach into the millions or tens of millions for larger companies. Compounding the financial planning challenge is the lack of harmonization across state laws, which are largely driven by local economic incentives and vary significantly in their requirements and timelines.
• Understand enforcement exposure and the limits of legal relief.Enforcement risk is real and comes from multiple directions — states and the Circular Action Alliance may act against companies that fail to join a Producer Responsibility Organization, miss filing deadlines, or submit incomplete data. While the injunctive relief granted in National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors v. Oregon Department of Environmental Quality offers some protection, it applies narrowly to NAW members only and has no effect on other organizations or states. California's law is tightly drafted and may offer fewer avenues for relief than Oregon's, and wholesale federal preemption remains unlikely given that solid waste regulation is predominantly a state function.

A Conversation With Child Safety Advocates

The panelists for this session brought together a remarkably diverse set of perspectives united by a shared commitment to child safety, spanning grassroots advocacy, legislative action, global nonprofit leadership, and international regulatory experience. Their backgrounds range from founding a peer-led infant sleep safety network and driving landmark federal legislation on button battery hazards, to leading a global organization dedicated to protecting children from preventable injuries and advising governments and companies across multiple continents on product safety frameworks and market surveillance. Each panelist has translated deeply personal conviction or extensive professional experience — and in some cases both — into meaningful, systemic impact for children and families. Drawing on that breadth of experience, the group explored how industry, the public sector, and advocacy organizations can work together to design safer children's products, identify risks early, and equip consumers with the knowledge they need to act on critical child safety initiatives.

Here is what product safety professionals need to know:

• Collaboration as a safety strategy. When industry participants come together through working group coalitions, the results speak for themselves — shared experience leads to sharper decision-making, stronger best practices, and ultimately, safer products for consumers.
• Building a culture of safety where education, collaboration, and proactive design go hand in hand. The most impactful child safety campaigns do not happen in silos — they are built on genuine collaboration between industry, advocacy groups, and the public sector. Reese's Law stands as a strong example of how this kind of coordinated effort can translate into real protection for children against hazards like button cell battery ingestion. That proactive mindset should carry through to product development as well, with safety professionals integrated into design from the very beginning to identify and eliminate risks before products ever reach the market. And while compliance with safety standards is nonnegotiable, it should represent the floor, not the ceiling.

Stay tuned for more recaps from the ICPHSO Annual Meeting & Training Symposium.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.