In its May, 1996 Guiding Principles for Packaging Stewardship, the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME) stated that "packaging stewardship is a concept by which industry, governments and consumers assume greater responsibility for ensuring that the manufacture, use, reuse, recycling and disposal of packaging has a minimum impact on the environment." This statement introduces two of the key elements of the concept of stewardship:

• concern about environmental impacts throughout a product’s lifecycle; and
• the assumption of responsibility for those impacts by various actors other than – or in addition to – the party who has physical control of the product at any given point in time.

The Guiding Principles further state that any packaging stewardship program "should operate within the context of efficient recovery systems for all recyclable materials, whether or not their previous use was for packaging" and that "the ultimate goal is not to have just packaging stewardship, but product stewardship as well."

The scope of such product stewardship initiatives is now very wide. There are some important similarities among these programs. In particular, all stewardship programs share the emphasis in the Guiding Principles that all actors in the product chain must play important roles. The Guiding Principles suggest, for example, that industry has a "prime responsibility" to design according to the 3Rs principles, take steps to divert materials from disposal, actively use recovered materials and ensure proper handling in the event of disposal. The Principles also suggest that governments have a responsibility to promote packaging stewardship and to encourage widespread recognition and adoption of the Principles, and that consumers have a responsibility to make appropriate purchasing choices and to divert packaging from disposal where facilities exist.

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