Seven States In, More on the Way: What the Packaging EPR Landscape Looks Like Halfway Through 2026

As of this summer, seven states have enacted comprehensive packaging EPR laws: California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington. Two of those programs — Oregon and Colorado — are already operational, with producer registration, reporting, and fee obligations in full effect. California’s implementing regulations took effect in May, with the broader program set to phase in this coming January. Six states under the Circular Action Alliance had reporting deadlines tied to the end of May. And at least two more states introduced their own packaging EPR bills this year, with several others still circulating proposals.

None of that is packaging-specific trivia. It’s a pattern, and it’s one we’ve watched play out across tires, used oil, paint, batteries, and a dozen other material categories over the past several years. New legislation creates a program that didn’t exist before. An existing program gets extended into a new jurisdiction. Volume outgrows whatever process — spreadsheet, PDF form, inherited system — got the organization through its first few years. And then someone, usually a new executive director or a board member, asks the question everyone’s been quietly wondering: is our current process going to hold up?

A few things worth watching if you’re managing a program through this stretch:

The shift toward producer-fee (cost-internalized) funding is accelerating. Consumer-fee programs are simple to administer — a flat fee at point of sale — but regulators increasingly prefer producer fees tied to market share, and increasingly layer eco-modulation on top: bonuses for higher recycled content, penalties for materials that are harder to recycle. That’s a meaningful jump in reporting complexity for any organization managing it, and it tends to be the moment manual processes start to visibly strain.

Enforcement is getting real, not theoretical. Oregon’s environmental agency published its first list of allegedly noncompliant producers this spring. That’s a signal other states will likely follow, and it raises the stakes on getting registration and reporting right the first time, not catching errors after the fact.

Scope is expanding almost everywhere. Battery laws that once covered a narrow range of chemistries now reach medium-format batteries. Paint programs are absorbing aerosols and specialty coatings. New product categories — textiles, EV batteries, carpet, solar panels, gas cylinders — are getting their own EPR frameworks state by state, each with its own quirks in funding, reporting, and collection logistics.

None of this is a reason for alarm. It’s the normal life cycle of a maturing regulatory space. But it is a good moment to ask, honestly, whether the systems and processes that got your program through its first few years are the ones that’ll carry it through the next five. We’ve spent years watching stewardship organizations hit that inflection point — some smoothly, some not — and it’s usually not the program that changes suddenly. It’s that the gap between what the program needs and what the current process can deliver finally becomes too wide to ignore.

If you’re in the middle of that assessment right now, you’re not alone, and you’re not behind. It’s just where a lot of programs are this year.