Maine Timeline Firms Up: SO Proposals Due August 3; Registration Expected to Begin at End of 2026

Proposals in response to Maine DEP's June 15 Stewardship Organization RFP are due August 3, 2026; CAA has said it intends to respond. DEP now anticipates producer registration and invoicing will begin at the end of 2026 and municipal reimbursements may begin at the end of 2027, with producer guidance expected in summer 2026. Once the selected SO opens its registration mechanism, producers will have 90 days to register. Source: Maine DEP (July 2026); Sustainable Packaging Coalition (June 22, 2026).

Correction, August 23, 2026. Two things in this entry are now superseded. First, the proposal deadline was not August 3: Maine DEP’s own announcement gives it as August 18, 2026 at 4:00 p.m., and the August 3 date came from a secondary read that was never checked against the RFP. Second, the RFP closed with zero proposals and CAA declined to bid on August 19, so the registration timeline this entry described does not exist. DEP said on August 20 that it is assessing all options and will reassess its start-up registration and invoicing dates. See the current entry, No One Bid to Run Maine Packaging EPR Program. Source: Maine DEP (August 20, 2026).