In the wake of uncertainty in the USA caused by job cuts, new legislation, and tariff wars, how are individual states planning on filling the potential sustainability leadership gap? Olga Kachook, SPC Director at GreenBlue, tells us more.
With the latest news on tariffs, a trade war, and plastic straws, it might seem like the future for sustainable packaging in the U.S. isn’t especially bright. And yet, slowly but surely, the country is making progress on certain sustainable packaging fronts.
In everything from emissions standards to renewable energy, states, more so than the federal government, have always been the true champions of sustainability. Packaging is no exception. As federal policies stall or hinder well-established trend lines, how might the fifty states lead the U.S. toward more sustainable packaging systems?
Five states have passed Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws and are moving into implementation
Maine, Colorado, California, Oregon, and Minnesota passed EPR laws in 2021-2024. These five states together make up about 17% of the U.S. population (56.3 million people), and are slowly starting to move into implementation. In recent months, Circular Action Alliance (CAA), the Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO) for four of the five states, submitted a draft EPR program plan in Colorado and received approval from Oregon for their previously submitted and revised program plan.
Which state might be next? In 2025, Washington State (with a population of 7.958 million) launched its fifth attempt to pass an EPR bill, which is similar to other states’ EPR laws. Given the state’s many attempts and environmental leaning, this could be the year that the West Coast completes its transition to EPR.
Interest in EPR is bipartisan and nationwide
It’s important to recognize that EPR in the U.S. is not just a Democratic or coastal phenomenon — Nebraska, North Carolina and Tennessee have all introduced draft EPR bills in the previous two years, alongside the liberal leaning states of New York, New Jersey, and Washington.
Also noteworthy is how these bills are titled and positioned. Tennessee’s proposed EPR bill is called a “Waste to Jobs Act,” leaning into the bipartisan appeal of creating jobs and not being another states’ dumping ground for low-value materials. It’s fair to assume all states — conservative and liberal — are catching on to the idea that they can start to share or transfer the costs of recycling programs to producers, thereby greatly reducing their own costs.
Even more states are exploring recycled content laws
It’s not just EPR. At the end of 2024, five states had passed stand-alone laws requiring post-consumer recycled content in plastic packaging. Three more states had proposed this type of legislation in 2024, and in 2025 we’ve already seen four states introduce bills with language around recycled content.
Recycled content laws allow states to take an incremental approach, wading slowly into packaging policy waters. The minimum recycled content requirements they outline help stabilize markets for recycled materials and typically garner support from waste management companies and haulers, since the laws drive demand for recycled material.
They are also more positive packaging policies than bans, although these have also not fallen out of favor. Thirteen states introduced bans in the first two months of 2025 alone, and most have multiple bills ranging from banning expanded polystyrene foodservice packaging to preventing hotels from supplying miniature personal care items in single-use packaging.
California is often a bellwether
Many in the US believe that as California goes, the country will (eventually) follow. The numbers speak for themselves — California’s GDP was $3.9 trillion in 2023, representing 14% of the U.S. GDP and the fifth largest global economy. Across industries, California’s regulations have often informed and translated into national standards.
For example, in 1966 the state established the first vehicle tailpipe emissions standards in the nation, and later established the California Air Resources Board. Four years later, the board adopted the country’s first NOx emissions standards for motor vehicles. It did so because of special federal permission that allowed it to set tougher air regulations than the U.S. government.
Cut to 2010: The various federal and state groups, along with car manufacturers, established a unified national program harmonizing greenhouse gas emission standards and fuel efficiency standards. Though this effort met rollbacks and federal pushback, today California’s standards are the de facto national standard.
We’re seeing the same in packaging. California’s EPR law stands out for two big reasons — for the source reduction requirements and for the creation of the California Plastic Pollution Mitigation Fund. No other state law goes as far as this.
The source reduction requirements will actually reduce the amount of plastic packaging that enters into the California market. Since manufacturers do not just make packaging for one state at a time this policy will reverberate throughout the other 49 states. Meanwhile, the Plastic Pollution Mitigation Fund is unique in that it’s separate from and in addition to the EPR fees paid by producers.
The state estimates that it will raise $5 billion dolars across a 10-year span, and plans to use this funding to support environmental mitigation, environmental justice, and public health initiatives. Producers will end up spending significant money in the state in order to meet the ambitious targets that have been set out. Since California is a market most producers are not willing to give up, they must be up for the task.
Finally, it’s worth noting: as of this writing, no states have made plans to “go back” to plastic straws. It seems they have bigger fish to fry.
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