expressed in those sectors where producers retain actual ownership. The basic idea is that if producers are required to retain ownership (or equivalent responsibility) over products through their entire service lives, then the producers will become creative about conserving these materials and/or making them out of benign substances. Although the main concern is post consumer waste, this end phase is actually just the point of entry for measures that radically affect upstream extraction and production phases. When ownership remains centralized with manufacturers, instead of being distributed among consumers, the producers earn their profits not by churning out and selling as many products as possible, but by selling services. This might take the form of selling the use of a product (e.g. a TV or carpet), or the selling of an actual outcome (like pest control). EPR encourages both material conservation and a more direct focus on meeting needs. It is a means of disconnecting material growth from economic growth. It creates cyclical processes, builds full costs into market prices, increases resource-productivity, and facilitates service production all at the same time. EPR can be applied in many different ways, and can be voluntary or mandatory. But its greatest potential can be realized when it is treated as the underlying principle of economic regulation. Then it can gradually transform the fundamental driving forces of the economy. Implemented comprehensively, it can be the single most important policy instrument in changing the River Economy into a Lake Economy. Questions of social democracy and environmental responsibility for the corporate order today are ultimately