What policy, implementation, and results revealed in 2025 and what is ahead in 2026.
By Heidi Sanborn, MPA
Increasing recycling through Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policy may sometimes be framed as environmental or political. EPR is neither blue nor red, and it was never just about the environment. While effective recycling systems can lead to cleaner air and water, these policies are fundamentally about public health, worker safety, and economic benefit, using our free-market system as it was designed. As conservative economists have said, if you want to reduce pollution without a lot of regulations, make the polluter pay. When designers of products can externalize the public health and environmental costs and risks onto other people and the planet and profit mightily from it, our economy is not operating as designed. When done right, EPR unlocks billions in economic value, protects the essential workers who keep our streets clean and the materials management system running, and strengthens local and national economies. Producers of products will still profit, but not at the expense of others by externalizing costs.
After two decades of building momentum, the U.S. has entered a new phase. The focus is no longer on passing laws, but on whether those laws achieve the goals after being implemented. Policy alone does not ensure recycling works; we create jobs, prevent fires in trucks and facilities, stabilize municipal budgets, or protect workers. Implementation does. In practice, this next phase centers on four connected outcomes:
1. Protecting workers and stopping fires
2. Keeping American factories supplied with valuable recycled materials
3. Prioritizing domestic feedstock for U.S. manufacturing
4. Ensuring programs are implemented in ways that actually work
Policies Rooted in Shared Priorities
One of the most telling trends in recent years is where stewardship policies are advancing. They are no longer confined to states traditionally associated with environmental leadership. Instead, they are emerging in places where practical concerns like the public not wanting landfills to expand, cross political lines.
Nebraska鈥檚 Safe Battery Collection and Recycling Act passing in 2025 highlights this shift. It demonstrates how stewardship policies can succeed in a non-traditional EPR state when they focus on shared priorities. Lithium-ion batteries pose growing risks across the recycling system, from curbside carts to trucks to transfer stations, materials recovery facilities, transfer trailers and even landfills. These fires put essential workers in danger, and system infrastructure, reliability, and insurability at risk. Fires endanger workers and their jobs, damage infrastructure, disrupt service, increase insurance costs, and make insurability an issue. Battery stewardship policies address these risks directly. They protect essential workers, reduce emergency response and insurance costs, prevent infrastructure damage, and support the recovery of critical minerals essential to American manufacturing and supply chain security. When stewardship programs are appropriately designed, they reduce risk across the system while incentivizing innovation and rewarding responsible actors.
Similar dynamics are emerging in other states, including Florida, where battery stewardship proposals were being pre-filed ahead of 2026. These efforts are practical responses to real system challenges, not ideological exercises.
Proven Systems Still Matter
As states debate new approaches, it is equally important to recognize what already works. Deposit Return Systems operate in 10 states, nine of which are producer run with the exception of California being state run, are true EPR systems with the addition of a deposit to increase returns. DRS remains one of the most effective and well-documented tools for material recovery. After 50 years of implementation in the U.S., they are proven to reduce litter, deliver clean material streams, create jobs, protect public investment, and provide reliable valuable material supply at scale. This reliability allows American companies with domestic plants to recycle aluminum, glass, and plastic and increase recycled content, avoiding the need to landfill valuable materials.
New York鈥檚 experience illustrates the tension many states face. Over the past year, two packaging EPR bills were introduced, and neither advanced. That recurring pattern has renewed discussion about whether reforms to existing Bottle Bills should come first, or whether deposit systems should be strengthened alongside broader packaging EPR. However, due to the huge increase in fires affecting all facilities, why are we not ensuring battery EPR is passed in every state first? I start every presentation with 鈥淔irst, Stop the Fires.鈥�
Connecticut鈥檚 recent updates to its deposit system demonstrate how modernized DRS programs can unlock economic, environmental, and public health benefits while strengthening domestic material supply, although there have been recent attempts to advocate for rolling back the deposit to 5 cents. As packaging EPR continues to evolve nationally, deposit systems remain a proven EPR solution rather than a competing policy.
Legislative Momentum Continues as Implementation Accelerates
Legislative activity continues across the country. New Hampshire has pre-filed both EPR for packaging and DRS bills. South Carolina has introduced a DRS proposal. Wisconsin has seen a packaging EPR. Not every bill will advance in each session, but each reflects growing recognition that the current system is not delivering consistent outcomes for communities, ratepayers, or businesses.
What changes in the coming year is that multiple programs move from planning into operation. Oregon鈥檚 packaging EPR program began implementation in mid-2025. Colorado鈥檚 program will also be operational in 2026, with producers reporting data, paying fees, and funding system improvements. Maine, Maryland, Washington, Minnesota, and California all reach significant compliance and planning milestones in the same timeframe. As these programs move into operation, implementation challenges, including litigation such as the pending Oregon lawsuit and others that may arise, will shape real-world outcomes.
For producers, local governments, recyclers, and manufacturers, this is when policy becomes real. Reporting requirements, fee structures, service standards, and performance expectations move from legislative text into contracts, budgets, and daily operations.
Essential Workers at the Center of the System
Implementation is where trust is built or lost. Communities have invested heavily in recycling infrastructure, and consumers expect systems that work. Essential workers make that possible.
They show up every day regardless of extreme weather or potential exposure to dangerous products improperly disposed of in the system. They worked through the pandemic. They operate early mornings, holidays, overnight shifts, and long routes to keep materials moving safely. Stewardship policies must protect workers by prioritizing safety, system reliability, and risk reduction. Successful stewardship policies create clear incentives that reward innovation and responsible behavior across the supply chain.
Packaging, Textiles, and the Next Generation of Stewardship
Packaging is not the only material stream under scrutiny. Textiles are rapidly emerging as one of the fastest-growing waste streams in the country. California鈥檚 textile EPR law SB 707 represents a major step toward addressing reuse, repair, and responsible end-of-life management for clothing and household textiles.
Similar textile stewardship proposals are now being considered in Washington, New York, and Rhode Island. As with packaging and batteries, textile stewardship will succeed only if implementation reflects real market conditions, supports existing infrastructure, and supports reuse and repair alongside recycling.
Recycling Is Only Real When It Becomes Something New
Across all recycling and stewardship policies, one issue cuts through every debate: responsible end markets. Once materials are collected and sorted by essential workers, they must be used. Recycling is only real when it becomes a new product or packaging. If materials collected for recycling are landfilled, incinerated, or stockpiled, the system has failed to deliver on its economic, environmental, and public health promises. It has also failed to honor the work of essential workers, and the trust consumers place in the system. This challenge affects every recycling program in America
Federal Attention and the Limits of Preemption
As state programs expand, federal attention has increased. The Department of Justice has sought input on how state recycling and EPR laws may affect interstate commerce, and new proposals in the U.S. House have raised questions about national harmonization and truth in labeling. At the same time, organizations such as the National Stewardship Action Council (NSAC) have cautioned that any national framework should build on strong state experience rather than preempt it, noting that many programs are still in early regulatory development and just starting operations and function as pilots, not yet as data points.
National preemption can only work when it strengthens outcomes, protects workers and consumers, and respects the role states have played as laboratories for policy innovation. We also agree that harmonization is a goal and will make compliance easier for Producer Run Organizations (PROs), but again, we need data first not preemption before having good data on what works.
A Shared Stake in Getting This Right
These policies are not the environment versus economic, or blue versus red. They are about public health, worker safety, economic and supply chain resilience, and community trust.
NSAC has been involved in the introduction of many of these laws through negotiation, passage, and now implementation. That continuity matters. It is why NSAC convenes national working groups for packaging EPR implementation, household hazardous waste, DRS, textiles, and illegal toner ink jet cartridges.
The next chapter of materials management policy will be written not in legislation alone, but also in daily operations, market outcomes, worker safety records, and cost changes in the system. If it is working correctly, overall system costs should go down over time with better design for recycling. If implementation is done well, incentivizing design changes will result in system cost reductions and the ending of externalizing costs onto taxpayers, ratepayers, workers, and the environment. That is a goal shared across industries, sectors, and political lines. Maybe it is time we stop making Americans work for recycling and start making recycling work for Americans. | WA
Remade in America: A Commitment to a Circular Economy
This past November, the National Stewardship Action Council and Stewardship Action Foundation launched the ReMade in America initiative and pledge. While stewardship policies may play a role, ReMade in America is a broader commitment to building a circular economy that works for America鈥攐ne that that values materials, people, and domestic manufacturing.
At its core, ReMade in America is about national security, resilient supply chains, and prioritizing domestic workers and feedstock for American manufacturing. It reflects growing recognition across industry, government, society that recycling and circularly only succeed when materials are made into new products and packaging.
The principles are straightforward. Circular systems must be good for people, good for the planet, and good for the economy. They must operate on fair market principles and work best when led by the private sector, with government playing a critical role in setting performance standards, ensuring compliance, and protecting public interest. Strong systems reduce reliance on taxpayer and ratepayer funding, incentivize innovation, create local jobs, and strengthen American manufacturing.
Heidi Sanborn, MPA, widely regarded as godmother of EPR in the U.S., is Executive Director/CEO of the National Stewardship Action Council. With more than three deaces of leadership in resoruce management and recycling, Heidi has worked across industry, government, and the nonprofit sector to advance practical, market-baed solutions that reduce waste, improve product design and recyclablity and strengthen circular economy systems. Heidi is nationally recognized for designing and implmenting some of the country鈥檚 most impactful circular economy policies, while serving as a trusted convener among manufacturers, local governments, waste and recycling operators, environmental organizations, and regulators. Her work is grounded in collaboraiton across the aisle, ensuring polices are durable, cost effective, and workable in the real world. She is frequently sought out by policymakers, industry leaders, and practioners for her ability to bridge competing interests, translate complex policy into actionable solutions, and keep a clear focus on outcomes that benefit communities, works, and the economy. Heidi can be reached at (916) 217-1109 or e-mail聽[email protected].