Maine DEP’s Stewardship Organization solicitation, RFP-202605094, was published on June 15, 2026 and closed on
August 18, 2026 at 4:00 p.m. with zero proposals submitted. DEP announced this on August 20 and said it “is assessing all options at this time; further information will be forthcoming in a future newsletter.” The Circular Action Alliance, which was the only expected bidder and which holds the equivalent role in California, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington, publicly declined to bid on August 19. CAA said the RFP’s scope did not align with its operational practices, systems and data stewardship standards, and that it had no visibility into the full requirements until the RFP issued. It left open the possibility of bidding on a future solicitation. The program stays at step 4 of DEP’s nine-step process, where it has sat since December 2024.
What this means for you: nothing changes today, and that is the whole point. Maine producers still have no registration, no reporting and no fee obligation, because the registration clock only starts within 90 days of a Stewardship Organization making a registration mechanism available, and there is no Stewardship Organization. Maine is now the only state with an enacted packaging EPR law and no organization in place. If you had Maine startup fees in a late 2026 budget, take them out: DEP has said it intends to reassess the anticipated dates for producer start-up registration and invoicing, so the previous “late 2026” expectation no longer rests on anything. Alternative Collection Program applications are also frozen, since DEP only begins accepting them the day it and a Stewardship Organization enter into a contract. Source:
Maine DEP, Stewardship Organization RFP-202605094 Announcement (August 20, 2026, read in full); CAA’s decision reported by
Resource Recycling (August 19, 2026).