In 2008, San Luis Obispo County, California became the first
sub-national government in the US to mandate retail take-back
of household hazardous waste and materials (HWWM). The San
Luis Obispo (SLO) system is not a reverse logistics program in
which materials delivered to the retail establishment are
required or destined to be returned to the original producer. As
discussed below, instead, retail stores selling specific products
must collect them at the end of life (EOL); accumulated HHWM is
then collected and managed by the county government. A driver
in establishing this retail take-back system was to create a highly
convenient collection system for consumers. The SLO system
employs an “apportioned responsibility” scheme in which the
role and responsibilities of each participant is clearly established
(OECD, 2001). However, the SLO system is unique in that the
producer has no mandated role. Although this is inherently
counter to the concept of EPR/PS, this is also a function of the
legal and economic constraints facing a county-level government
in the US