Legislators and industry professionals are gearing up for a year of complex, nuanced recycling bills that can change the way states approach their recycling strategies in 2025.
Extended producer responsibility programs for packaging and other materials will continue to be a priority in many states, continuing a trend from the past few years. Lawmakers and activists are also expected to continue to debate over chemical recycling’s role in EPR and the country’s wider recycling capacity and recycled content priorities.
Fresh off key container deposit law updates that went into effect in California and Connecticut last year, several states are expected to consider putting forth legislation to establish new bottle bill programs or update aging ones in an effort to raise return rates.
Meanwhile, Oregon will be the first to implement its EPR for packaging law this year, with other states putting together crucial pieces of their own EPR policies that passed in previous years.
“2025 will be a big year for policy that's already been in action,” said Emily Friedman, recycled plastics senior market editor at ICIS. “The true test is what the investment will be in these issues for the next two to three to five years.”
Analysts are confident that at least a few states will pass notable recycling legislation in 2025, but federal priorities remain murky as the new Trump administration announced numerous executive orders with possible implications for the industry. It’s unclear whether the new 119th Congress will reintroduce any notable federal recycling-related legislation left over from the previous session — including two bipartisan, industry-supported recycling bills that failed to move forward.
“I don't see recycled plastics as a priority agenda item for this administration,” Friedman said.
EPR looms large in the legislative landscape
State EPR legislation has become commonplace on legislative dockets in recent years, and analysts don’t expect that to change in 2025. High-profile EPR for packaging bills that didn’t quite cross the finish line in 2024 have already returned in 2025 in states like New York, Tennessee and Washington.
Lawmakers are becoming more and more familiar with the complexities of passing and implementing EPR laws, especially for packaging, said Kate Bailey, chief policy officer of the Association of Plastic Recyclers, during a December webinar. That’s thanks in part to insights from five states that are going through the implementation process for their own EPR for packaging laws.
Colorado, Oregon, Maine, California and Minnesota are all in various stages of implementation and are working out critical decisions related to how these laws will affect recycling and waste operators, as well as producers. That work will continue in 2025, offering even more insight into the realities of building brand-new EPR programs.
EPR bills for materials beyond packaging are expected to show up across the country in 2025. Massachusetts lawmakers have introduced EPR bills for paint, mattresses and batteries, and a state commission will spend 2025 researching how such programs could work.
Battery EPR bills enjoyed success last year, including in Illinois, where it had backing from National Waste & Recycling Association and major haulers such as Republic Services and WM. The threat of fires from lithium-ion batteries at waste and recycling facilities has prompted the industry to rally around EPR for these materials, which could make the issue easier to pass in more states.
In California, the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors is considering an EPR program for household hazardous waste and e-waste. That discussion would only affect the L.A. area. Heidi Sanborn, executive director of the National Stewardship Action Council, said NSAC plans to introduce a similar statewide bill as well. Such EPR conversations are even more pressing this year due to conversations around managing waste in light of recent wildfires, she said.
EPR’s prevalence could help or hurt in a crowded bill field
Though lawmakers are becoming more familiar with EPR for a range of materials, it doesn’t make new EPR laws any easier to pass, said Mike O’Donnell, chief operating officer of the Mattress Recycling Council. The organization operates mattress stewardship programs in Oregon, Rhode Island, Connecticut and California.
Lawmakers are likely to face all the usual EPR hurdles in 2025, including competing stakeholder motivations and debates over producer control and EPR’s business impacts, O’Donnell said. Some state legislatures might also find themselves splitting their attention between several types of EPR bills that cover different kinds of materials, such as separate bills for mattresses and packaging. That could impact the bills’ momentum toward passage, or it could help keep the issues in the spotlight longer.
“Paper and packaging EPR is probably going to be a top priority for a lot of legislators, just due to the prevalence of those materials in the solid waste stream,” he said. “But simply having an interest in getting a bill negotiated is one thing, and getting it passed by both chambers and signed by governors is another.”
Some lawmakers note Minnesota’s success in passing an EPR for packaging bill last year as an example of how states can gain ground when they balance their state’s unique blend of stakeholder interests. That’s the path Tennessee plans to take with the latest iteration of its EPR for packaging bill, said bill sponsor state Sen. Heidi Campbell in a November interview.
Tennessee’s bill is meant to take into account the state’s “business-centric” priorities, which can not only improve recycling but also support jobs and attract companies that want to use postconsumer material, Campbell said.
“We’re really relying on the business stakeholders,” she said, noting that brands like Unilever, Nestlé and Mars support the bill, along with companies that want access to more post-consumer material, such as Kaiser Aluminum Corp. “It’s an opportunity to be a market leader.”
That strategy goes beyond the common argument that EPR is needed to help improve state recycling systems. Yet the coalition behind the bill says environmental reasons are still very much in the spotlight. EPR can help reverse the state’s underperforming recycling system – a system that currently ranks 48th in the country, according to a report from Ball and Eunomia.
Bottle bills continue years-long battle for acceptance
Bottle bills — both new programs and expansions of existing laws — have been notoriously difficult to pass, with no major container deposit legislation making it across the finish line last year. But lawmakers in at least 10 states introduced container deposit legislation in 2024, and more are expected to follow suit in 2025, according to APR.
New this year is Washington, D.C.’s bid to pass a bottle bill, a move to curb container-related litter in a major river near the nation’s capital. Proponents said they closely studied bottle bills in other states to craft a policy that could gain wide support in the district.
“You won’t find anything revolutionary in our bill,” said Councilmember Brianne Nadeau, the bill’s sponsor. “We’re looking at states like Oregon, like Michigan, that have high return rates.”
Massachusetts and Maryland are other states that have reintroduced bottle bills so far this year, with more expected in states such as New York, where advocates are making a new push on a bottle bill that failed to pass last year.
Though litter abatement is still a big issue that drives lawmakers to introduce new bottle bills, “this conversation has really changed over the past several years, and the ‘why’ of it has changed,” Bailey said.
Certain stakeholders, including the aluminum industry, have become more involved in the bill process, saying container deposit systems help save energy by reusing aluminum in their manufacturing processes. On top of that, “domestic security is a big concern,” Bailey said. Such organizations see aluminum recycling as a way to help the U.S. avoid importing raw aluminum and reduce reliance on other countries.
The Can Manufacturers Institute is among the groups that have rallied behind bottle bill legislation, which it calls “recycling refunds,” as a way to increase aluminum recycling rates. It helped back bills last year in Illinois and Washington, and the group said it plans to renew its push this year for both EPR laws and recycling refund policies in such states.
But one thing hasn’t changed over the years: such legislation still needs support from MRF operators and haulers, who are typically skeptical of the possible impacts on their business.
NWRA, for example, maintains that most bottle bills reduce MRF revenue. Meanwhile, the Solid Waste Association of North America updated its policy position last year to support certain bottle bill systems as a key way to increase collection rates.
This story first appeared in the Waste Dive: Recycling newsletter. Sign up for the weekly emails here.
