The enforcement provisions in U.S. packaging EPR laws are not symbolic. Penalties range from $5,000 to $100,000 per day across states, and multiple states have activated sales restrictions that bar no...
Trash Club Insights
Packaging may be the headline EPR category, but it is not the only one. Across the United States, EPR frameworks are expanding into batteries, electronics, textiles, and the critical minerals embedded...
California's SB 54, the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act, is the most consequential EPR law in the United States. Signed on June 30, 2022, it sets the most aggre...
Seven states with enacted EPR laws. Ten or more with bills in the pipeline. Each with its own coverage definitions, producer thresholds, reporting deadlines, fee structures, and enforcement mechanisms...
The 2026 legislative session opened with new EPR packaging bills in two states that had not previously appeared on compliance radar screens: New Hampshire and Wisconsin. Holland & Knight's January 20...
EPR fees are not flat taxes. Every U.S. packaging EPR law includes provisions for eco-modulation — adjusting producer fee rates based on the environmental performance of their packaging. In theory, ec...
Washington became the seventh state to enact packaging EPR when Governor Jay Inslee signed SB 5284 on May 17, 2025. But unlike Oregon and Colorado, which moved from enactment to enforcement within two...
In most regulated industries, compliance infrastructure is fragmented — multiple service providers, competing platforms, jurisdictional specialists. In U.S. packaging EPR, one organization has emerged...
Maine holds a unique distinction in the EPR landscape: it was the first state in the nation to enact a packaging EPR law when Governor Janet Mills signed LD 1541 on July 12, 2021. Yet more than four y...
For producers navigating EPR for packaging, 2026 is the year compliance shifts from preparation to execution across multiple states simultaneously. What follows is a comprehensive, state-by-state cale...
On January 1, 2026, Colorado becomes only the second state — after Oregon — where producers actually pay Extended Producer Responsibility fees for packaging. This milestone, mandated by HB 22-1355 (si...
Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging is no longer a policy experiment — it is the law of the land in seven U.S. states, with more on the way. In 2025, the EPR landscape shifted from aspirati...
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