Recycling bins sit on the sidewalk in Portland, Ore., on Feb. 10, 2026.
Eli Imadali / OPB
Oregon lawmakers passed the Plastic Pollution and Recycling Modernization Act (RMA) in 2021. It was the first law of its kind, putting much of the responsibility to reduce waste on producers and manufacturers.
California, Washington, Colorado and a handful of other states have now passed similar laws. The Oregon law took effect July 1, 2025, and the state began collecting fees from producers to expand recycling infrastructure.
A recent report highlighted Oregon’s progress in the first year, including dozens of new producer-funded collection sites, 36,000 new recycling carts and $30 million dollars to improve and modernize recycling facilities.
The National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors sued the state to block the law shortly after it went into effect, but a federal judge has now rejected those arguments and upheld the constitutionality of Oregon’s law.
We talk about what’s next with Dan Leif, policy implementation director at The Recycling Partnership, a nonprofit helping municipalities across the country create and implement these kinds of laws.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Oregon lawmakers passed the Plastic Pollution and Recycling Modernization Act in 2021. It was the first law of its kind at the time, putting much of the responsibility to reduce waste on producers and manufacturers. Other states have since followed. The Oregon law took effect last summer, and a business group sued soon after. Last week, a federal judge rejected their arguments and upheld the constitutionality of Oregon’s law. Dan Leif joins us now. He is the policy implementation director at The Recycling Partnership. It’s a nonprofit that has championed these kinds of laws all around the country. Welcome to Think Out Loud.
Dan Leif: Hey, it’s great to be here. Thanks, Dave.
Miller: Can you remind us what the big goals of this law are?
Leif: Yeah, ultimately it’s something called extended producer responsibility. And what that does is it asks brand companies, the largest companies out there: Amazon, PepsiCo, Kraft-Heinz, to pay into the statewide recycling system to help fund improvements so that municipalities, waste haulers and others can more effectively handle those types of materials and build really a more resilient recycling system.
Miller: What’s the philosophy behind that? I mean, if I’m PepsiCo or Amazon, why should I be paying into this? It’s my consumers who are buying my products. Why should I pay?
Leif: Well, it’s a really good point and a really good question. In a lot of ways, these companies have really benefited from the recycling system. They have the ability to say, “Hey, this material is recyclable.” They want to see this stuff stay out of landfills, and they really rely on the existing recycling infrastructure. And so the concept is, it’s responsible to ask them to pay a part of the work that it takes to maintain and upgrade the system, especially as the packaging ecosystem changes and we see more types of plastic that might be a little bit more challenging to deal with, that if we’re going to need to enhance the recycling system, it seems only fair to ask the brands themselves to contribute some funding to it.
Miller: There had been some uncertainty about the future of this law in Oregon, and as a result, a lot of focus on the future of these laws nationwide because of this legal challenge that I mentioned briefly in my intro. So first of all, who brought this suit?
Leif: Yeah, it was a national trade organization called the National Association of Wholesaler Distributors or NAW. And they represent what they call an $8.7 trillion wholesale distribution industry. So there’s a whole industry out there of companies and infrastructure to take materials from manufacturers and then move them into the retail and other marketplace ecosystem. And that’s really what they do. And they felt some of the fees that the Oregon Plastic Pollution and Recycling Modernization Act was being asked to bring to their members were unfair and they challenged it in court.
Miller: What were their basic arguments?
Leif: Yeah, there was, there’s a few of them. One of them is that in a broad sense, they had concerns about an Oregon regulatory agency, DEQ, kind of regulating their members who are not based in Oregon. So this sort of interstate commerce element of the constitution.
Miller: They have consumers here, but they’re not based here.
Leif: Correct. Yeah. And the way that the RMA, the packaging law works is that those companies that are selling products that use packaging into the state of Oregon are on the hook to pay fees, whether those companies themselves are based in Oregon or not. So there’s this interstate element. And there was also some questions and concerns about the methodology that was used to calculate the fees and whether that itself was constitutional or not.
Miller: What did the judge say last week?
Leif: The judge really overwhelmingly sided with the law and really affirmed its constitutionality, along the lines of the arguments that were made really kind of said that they weren’t holding up in court in his estimation. So, like I said, it really was a fairly overwhelming finding that those of us that have worked to really advocate for these laws and help implement them, really appreciated, yeah.
Miller: But just to be clear, the law had already gone into effect last year for everyone but the plaintiffs. So this is not like some kind of national injunction that we’ve been seeing for executive orders or in this case would have been a statewide injunction saying while this is being considered, nothing will be implemented. The law has basically been already on the books. So what changed in Oregon when that happened on July 1, 2025?
Leif: Yeah, like you said, things have really continued to move forward from that implementation date. And so we have seen millions, tens of millions of dollars of funding coming from the brand companies, the producers who are obligated under the law, and actually moving into the recycling system. And there are communities, several in eastern Oregon, around the Roseburg area as well, that have actually seen new recycling carts come out to their customers and ratepayers, Oregonians across the state, as well as recycling trucks being funded. And so actually there’s people in Oregon who did not have curbside recycling service prior to July 1, 2025, and now they do.
Miller: It’s happened that quickly, even though the implementation just started on July 1 and that’s when the money was collected, enough money has been collected that it could already be dispersed and then spent on, say, bins or trucks?
Leif: Yeah, there’s a number of requests that are still out there. There’s still a lot to do, but there were some communities that were really targeted as kind of high priority, that they were at a level where they really should have a recycling service under existing Oregon law and they couldn’t due to a number of different marketplace factors. And so a group called Circular Action Alliance, which is the producer responsibility organization that works on behalf of the obligated producers under the law, they’ve really moved quickly to get that funding from the producers and get it out into the state.
Miller: It sounds like what you’re talking about so far there, I would describe that as recycling diffusion or the spread of recycling as opposed to recycling modernization, unless I’m wrong, but when is the modernization going to kick in?
Leif: Yeah, yeah. It is happening in terms of money as well going to those communities and allowing that access. I think what you’re identifying is sort of the baseline level of just being able to put materials out at the curb.
Miller: Right, say people in Roseburg now being able to do what people in Portland have already been able to do.
Leif: Right.
Miller: So the question is, when will we all be able to recycle things. Well, when will things be recycled in better ways than they are currently being done here?
Leif: Yeah, well, I think first off, I think allowing people in more rural areas that didn’t have access to this to have the same level that, say, we do in Portland, that to me actually is modernization. That is equity in action, allowing the same level of service to be available to people across the state. That’s something that folks in Roseburg and elsewhere, they want to be able to do it, and it feels really good to provide that now.
At the same time, maybe, yeah, a more kind of innovative, forward thinking example of what’s happening is that in the first year, we saw roughly $30 million go to the recycling facilities that then take in the materials that are collected at the curb. That’s allowing them to start to handle the contamination that has at times come in with collected recyclables a lot more efficiently, start to plan and bring on new equipment to bring more efficiency and ability to their process, and to really move toward cleaner loads of recyclables going back out into the marketplace and allowing the stuff that we’re working so hard to collect to more cost effectively and efficiently become new products and materials.
Miller: Is part of the idea behind this law to incentivize manufacturers to actually make changes to their packaging in the first place?
Leif: That certainly is an element that’s there. The idea being if packaging manufacturers and brand companies need to actually pay into the system, that they’re going to be thinking about that when they make their own design choices and the fees that are levied upon those companies, those vary based on factors like how recyclable that product is. I think it’s a really interesting experiment that we’re going through to see, does this type of system and legislation actually drive design changes? We’re gonna see that, but it’s at a scale of learning that we’ve never seen before.
Miller: It seems that that would be more likely to happen, what you’re talking about there, the more states require this, right? And California, Washington, Colorado – let me see if I can remember these – Maryland, Maine, those have all passed their own versions of these so-called extended producer responsibility laws. I mean, in California, obviously, is gigantic, a kind of country unto its own, but is there a number at which you think this is gonna tip the scales and we’ll make it so these national or international companies will say, you know what, it just makes sense, let’s change our packaging?
Leif: Yeah, well, first off, mad props because you got six of the seven states that have these laws.
Miller: I did look this morning, so I have about two hours of memory in my brain possible.
Leif: Great. That’s impressive unto itself. And the last state is Minnesota. So those are the seven.
Miller: All blue states.
Leif: Yes, which is interesting and maybe not shocking. But yeah, that point where it really tips the scale and influences design nationally, I think California itself has the power to do that. And California’s implementation process has been a journey. It is also encountering lawsuits on a couple of different fronts and that’s something we’re watching very, very closely. But it is, like Oregon, been moving forward and it’s expected that at the beginning of 2027, that’s when the money starts flowing into California. And just the scope of California’s law, the number of people there, the amount of packaging that goes into that state, the expectation is that those shifts that come as a result of the law will have some national implications.
Miller: Do you think that these laws are going to make it so producers just charge more for their products?
Leif: That’s an open question. There’s a lot that goes into the cost of what’s on the shelf, but the research that we’ve done shows that changes in packaging along the lines of what could be seen under these laws is a really, really small fraction compared to all of the other impacts when we look at global supply chains, consumer demand, macroeconomics, that’s the stuff that’s really going to lead to affordability questions and cost changes. Really, I think having a more resilient and efficient recycling system is going to bring these materials back into the manufacturing structure in a bigger way and that itself could actually be lower costs when it comes to the packaging supply chain question for brands.
Miller: What do you think it would take to make this a bipartisan interest?
Leif: It’s something that’s happening, actually. We were seeing interest in extended producer responsibility in states like Tennessee, Georgia, not saying those are going to pass necessarily soon. But I think that this idea of resilient domestic supply chains, keeping materials that we’re using here in the U.S., as opposed to relying on the rest of the world for our packaging needs.
Miller: Or shipping them to China and then getting them back again.
Leif: Exactly. That just makes sense, I think, across the aisle.
Miller: Dan, thanks very much.
Leif: Appreciate it, Dave.
Miller: Dan Leif is the policy implementation director at The Recycling Partnership.
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