Legislators and {industry} professionals are gearing up for a yr of advanced, nuanced recycling payments that may change the best way states strategy their recycling methods in 2025.
Prolonged producer duty packages for packaging and different supplies will proceed to be a precedence in lots of states, persevering with a development from the previous few years. Lawmakers and activists are additionally anticipated to proceed to debate over chemical recycling’s function in EPR and the nation’s wider recycling capability and recycled content material priorities.
Contemporary off key container deposit regulation updates that went into impact in California and Connecticut final yr, a number of states are anticipated to think about placing forth laws to ascertain new bottle invoice packages or replace getting older ones in an effort to lift return charges.
In the meantime, Oregon would be the first to implement its EPR for packaging regulation this yr, with different states placing collectively essential items of their very own EPR insurance policies that handed in earlier years.
“2025 will likely be a giant yr for coverage that is already been in motion,” mentioned Emily Friedman, recycled plastics senior market editor at ICIS. “The true check is what the funding will likely be in these points for the following two to a few to 5 years.”
Analysts are assured that a minimum of just a few states will move notable recycling laws in 2025, however federal priorities stay murky as the brand new Trump administration introduced quite a few govt orders with doable implications for the {industry}. It’s unclear whether or not the brand new 119th Congress will reintroduce any notable federal recycling-related laws left over from the earlier session — together with two bipartisan, industry-supported recycling payments that failed to maneuver ahead.
“I do not see recycled plastics as a precedence agenda merchandise for this administration,” Friedman mentioned.
EPR looms giant within the legislative panorama
State EPR laws has turn out to be commonplace on legislative dockets lately, and analysts don’t anticipate that to alter in 2025. Excessive-profile EPR for packaging payments that didn’t fairly cross the end line in 2024 have already returned in 2025 in states like New York, Tennessee and Washington.
Lawmakers have gotten an increasing number of aware of the complexities of passing and implementing EPR legal guidelines, particularly for packaging, mentioned Kate Bailey, chief coverage officer of the Affiliation of Plastic Recyclers, throughout a December webinar. That’s thanks partially to insights from 5 states which are going by way of the implementation course of for their very own EPR for packaging legal guidelines.
Colorado, Oregon, Maine, California and Minnesota are all in varied phases of implementation and are figuring out vital choices associated to how these legal guidelines will have an effect on recycling and waste operators, in addition to producers. That work will proceed in 2025, providing much more perception into the realities of constructing brand-new EPR packages.
EPR payments for supplies past packaging are anticipated to point out up throughout the nation in 2025. Massachusetts lawmakers have launched EPR payments for paint, mattresses and batteries, and a state fee will spend 2025 researching how such packages may work.
Battery EPR payments loved success final yr, together with in Illinois, the place it had backing from Nationwide Waste & Recycling Affiliation and main haulers akin to Republic Companies and WM. The specter of fires from lithium-ion batteries at waste and recycling amenities has prompted the {industry} to rally round EPR for these supplies, which may make the problem simpler to move in additional states.
In California, the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors is contemplating an EPR program for family hazardous waste and e-waste. That dialogue would solely have an effect on the L.A. space. Heidi Sanborn, govt director of the Nationwide Stewardship Motion Council, mentioned NSAC plans to introduce the same statewide invoice as nicely. Such EPR conversations are much more urgent this yr as a consequence of conversations round managing waste in mild of current wildfires, she mentioned.
EPR’s prevalence may assist or harm in a crowded invoice area
Although lawmakers have gotten extra aware of EPR for a variety of supplies, it doesn’t make new EPR legal guidelines any simpler to move, mentioned Mike O’Donnell, chief working officer of the Mattress Recycling Council. The group operates mattress stewardship packages in Oregon, Rhode Island, Connecticut and California.
Lawmakers are more likely to face all the standard EPR hurdles in 2025, together with competing stakeholder motivations and debates over producer management and EPR’s enterprise impacts, O’Donnell mentioned. Some state legislatures may also discover themselves splitting their consideration between a number of varieties of EPR payments that cowl completely different sorts of supplies, akin to separate payments for mattresses and packaging. That might influence the payments’ momentum towards passage, or it may assist preserve the problems within the highlight longer.
“Paper and packaging EPR might be going to be a high precedence for lots of legislators, simply as a result of prevalence of these supplies within the stable waste stream,” he mentioned. “However merely having an curiosity in getting a invoice negotiated is one factor, and getting it handed by each chambers and signed by governors is one other.”
Some lawmakers observe Minnesota’s success in passing an EPR for packaging invoice final yr for instance of how states can acquire floor once they stability their state’s distinctive mix of stakeholder pursuits. That’s the trail Tennessee plans to take with the newest iteration of its EPR for packaging invoice, mentioned invoice sponsor state Sen. Heidi Campbell in a November interview.
Tennessee’s invoice is supposed to have in mind the state’s “business-centric” priorities, which can’t solely enhance recycling but additionally assist jobs and appeal to corporations that wish to use postconsumer materials, Campbell mentioned.
“We’re actually counting on the enterprise stakeholders,” she mentioned, noting that manufacturers like Unilever, Nestlé and Mars assist the invoice, together with corporations that need entry to extra post-consumer materials, akin to Kaiser Aluminum Corp. “It’s a chance to be a market chief.”
That technique goes past the frequent argument that EPR is required to assist enhance state recycling techniques. But the coalition behind the invoice says environmental causes are nonetheless very a lot within the highlight. EPR can assist reverse the state’s underperforming recycling system – a system that presently ranks forty eighth within the nation, in line with a report from Ball and Eunomia.
Bottle payments proceed years-long battle for acceptance
Bottle payments — each new packages and expansions of present legal guidelines — have been notoriously tough to move, with no main container deposit laws making it throughout the end line final yr. However lawmakers in a minimum of 10 states launched container deposit laws in 2024, and extra are anticipated to comply with swimsuit in 2025, in line with APR.
New this yr is Washington, D.C.’s bid to move a bottle invoice, a transfer to curb container-related litter in a significant river close to the nation’s capital. Proponents mentioned they intently studied bottle payments in different states to craft a coverage that would acquire broad assist within the district.
“You gained’t discover something revolutionary in our invoice,” mentioned Councilmember Brianne Nadeau, the invoice’s sponsor. “We’re states like Oregon, like Michigan, which have excessive return charges.”
Massachusetts and Maryland are different states which have reintroduced bottle payments to date this yr, with extra anticipated in states akin to New York, the place advocates are making a brand new push on a bottle invoice that didn’t move final yr.
Although litter abatement remains to be a giant concern that drives lawmakers to introduce new bottle payments, “this dialog has actually modified over the previous a number of years, and the ‘why’ of it has modified,” Bailey mentioned.
Sure stakeholders, together with the aluminum {industry}, have turn out to be extra concerned within the invoice course of, saying container deposit techniques assist save vitality by reusing aluminum of their manufacturing processes. On high of that, “home safety is a giant concern,” Bailey mentioned. Such organizations see aluminum recycling as a means to assist the U.S. keep away from importing uncooked aluminum and cut back reliance on different nations.
The Can Producers Institute is among the many teams which have rallied behind bottle invoice laws, which it calls “recycling refunds,” as a technique to improve aluminum recycling charges. It helped again payments final yr in Illinois and Washington, and the group mentioned it plans to renew its push this yr for each EPR legal guidelines and recycling refund insurance policies in such states.
However one factor hasn’t modified over time: such laws nonetheless wants assist from MRF operators and haulers, who’re usually skeptical of the doable impacts on their enterprise.
NWRA, for instance, maintains that almost all bottle payments cut back MRF income. In the meantime, the Stable Waste Affiliation of North America up to date its coverage place final yr to assist sure bottle invoice techniques as a key technique to improve assortment charges.
This story first appeared within the Waste Dive: Recycling e-newsletter. Join the weekly emails right here.