Packaging EPR Update: Week of August 30, 2026

Legislative  |  CA

AB 2253, Assembly Member Boerner’s recycled content claims bill, was read a third time and passed by the Senate on August 28, 2026, by 27 ayes to 10 noes, and the Assembly concurred in the Senate amendments on August 30, 2026. The bill was enrolled on September 3, 2026 and has not been signed. The Governor must act by September 30, 2026.

The operative text is the August 21, 2026 Senate floor amendment, read in its official strikeout form. It amends, repeals and adds Section 42357.6 of the Public Resources Code. A recycled content claim must be based on actual recycled content determined using any of five chain of custody models named in the bill: identity-preserved, segregated, controlled blending, and rolling average percentage as described in ISO 22095:2020(E), or proportional attribution as defined in ISO 22095-2:2026. Two limits ride on the last of these: no recycling credits may be provided to any form of fuel use or fuel production, and there may be no credit transfers between unrelated processes. The claim may not exceed the third-party certified recycled content introduced into the producer’s overall supply stream for that product line, and it must conform to the FTC Green Guides at 16 C.F.R. Part 260 as they read on January 1, 2026. The August 21 amendment also broadened the deemed-compliance route, which had reached only plastic beverage containers subject to Section 14549.3 and now reaches any product meeting those reporting requirements.

What this means for you: nothing today, and nothing for three years. The substantive duties are operative January 1, 2030. If you make a voluntary recycled content claim on a label in California, this is the rule you will eventually be substantiating it against, and the practical answer is that credit-based accounting is permitted under a named ISO method rather than banned. Watch for the Governor’s signature or veto. Source: California Legislature, AB 2253 bill history (read August 30, 2026).

Update  |  RI

Rhode Island’s Statewide Implementation Analysis, required by R.I. Gen. Laws ch. 23-19.19 and enacted by H6207 of the 2025 session, is being carried out by RRS (Resource Recycling Systems) for RIDEM and the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation, with Resa Dimino as project director. The published project timeline is a draft report to RIDEM on September 1, 2026, a final report on November 1, 2026, and RIDEM transmitting it to the Governor on December 1, 2026.

RRS is modelling five program plans: an “As Is” program, EPR stand alone, a deposit return system stand alone, the proposed legislation (H6207 and S0996), and one further option RRS will suggest after the needs assessment. Each is assessed on key elements, system needs, a SWOT analysis, an implementation schedule, impact analysis and cost benefit analysis. The Rhode Island Redemption and Recycling Advisory Council is seated and has met twice, on June 9 and July 14, 2026, with agendas, presentations and minutes posted; public input workshops were held July 21 and public comment remains open through SmartComment.

What this means for you: nothing to comply with. Rhode Island has no EPR program, no producer registration and no fees, and all four packaging bills introduced there in 2026 died. Two things are worth knowing anyway. The date to watch is September 1, not December 1: December is when the finished report reaches the Governor, September is when the analysis first exists. And a stand-alone packaging EPR program is being costed on its own merits rather than only as a component of a bottle bill, which is how the last several states arrived at an EPR law. Source: RIDEM, Statewide Implementation Analysis and the RRS Advisory Council Meeting #1 deck (June 9, 2026), both read August 30, 2026.

Site Update

Two new pages, both written because a question kept arriving that the site answered only in pieces. B2B Packaging and EPR: Who Is the Producer? separates the two questions that get asked as one: whether a company that sells empty packaging to a filler is a producer (generally not, and Maryland says so in its regulation), and how each state treats packaging that only ever goes to business customers, which is not the flat exclusion most summaries describe. Reporting EPR Volumes You Cannot Directly Measure covers what to do when you sell through distributors and cannot see state-level sales: the three allocation methods in order of defensibility, the two states that expressly permit estimation and their conditions, and the methodology document that makes an estimate hold up.

Writing them forced three corrections elsewhere. The producer page now says plainly that the familiar five-tier cascade is the Washington, Maryland, Minnesota and Maine shape only, that Colorado and Oregon have no brand-owner tier, and that California’s first tier reaches a manufacturer that owns or is the licensee of the brand. The state cards for Washington, Maryland, Maine and Minnesota now quote how each instrument actually handles B2B packaging rather than paraphrasing it. And producer responsibility can be contractually assigned in four states, not one.