A federal deregulatory pullback is colliding with a patchwork of state environmental rules, and litigation is now doing the work that agencies won’t, according to David Biderman, founder of Biderman Consulting and former executive director of SWANA and vice president of government affairs at the National Waste & Recycling Association (NWRA).
Biderman said EPA has scaled back enforcement, thinned staffing at the Justice Department’s environmental section and pulled back funding relative to prior years, while states on the West Coast, in the Rocky Mountains and in parts of the Midwest and Northeast push forward on packaging EPR, organics diversion and PFAS restrictions.
“We have the federal government in active retreat from regulating environmental protection, and we have states, not all 50 states, but many states, moving forward with more pro-environment, progressive activities,” Biderman said during a regulatory trend session at the inaugural WR Expo in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
PFAS liability under Superfund remains the industry’s biggest legal exposure, Biderman said.
EPA’s 2024 rule designating PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) did not include an exemption for landfills as “passive receivers” of the chemicals, which landfill operators neither manufacture nor sell.
“Do landfills make the product that has PFAS in it? No. Do they sell the product that has PFAS in it? No. That’s Walmart and Target and everybody else,” Biderman said. “Those are the folks who the waste industry believes should be liable for PFAS liability under Superfund, not landfills and other waste companies.”
NWRA and other groups sued EPA over the rule. EPA has since said it won’t pursue government-owned landfills for PFAS liability, but that carve-out doesn’t cover private companies or block private lawsuits, he noted.
On Aug. 18, 2026, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled on the case, upholding EPA’s designation of PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances under CERCLA and rejecting the industry’s challenges.
A broader congressional exemption is unlikely this session and would have to restart with the next Congress in 2027, Biderman said.
On drinking water, the Trump administration has pushed compliance deadlines for utilities under the Biden-era PFAS rule out to 2031 and dropped four of the nine regulated compounds, Biderman said.
He also noted a proposal to eliminate Subpart HH of EPA’s greenhouse gas reporting program, which covers landfill methane data.
Packaging EPR laws are now on the books in seven states: three on the West Coast, including Oregon’s Recycling Modernization Act (SB 582) plus Colorado, Minnesota, Maryland and Maine, which remains the only state with an operating program.
New York has failed to pass EPR legislation in five legislative sessions, most recently the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (S1464), despite what Biderman described as strong disposal-capacity and political rationale for the state to act.
“New York is a logical state for having EPR, both for political and disposal capacity reasons, but they haven’t been able to get it over the finish line,” Biderman said, adding that Massachusetts and, more recently, Tennessee are also weighing packaging bills.
Legal challenges are now shaping how, or whether, those programs move forward. Biderman pointed to the Oregon EPR trial testing due process, First Amendment and dormant commerce clause arguments against the state’s EPR law, brought in part by the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (NAW).
“I’m not a betting man, but I am pretty sure a ruling is going to come out before Labor Day,” he said, noting that the outcome is being watched by other states defending similar programs, including a parallel Colorado case and newer California litigation.
A former lawyer, Biderman stressed how much courts now control the pace of policy.
“The lawyers are driving the train right now,” he said.
Biderman also flagged several other state-level trends such as organics diversion mandates modeled on California’s SB 1383 and expanding bottle bill deposits. Connecticut doubled its deposit to a dime and added water containers to its program.
He also pointed to recycled-content mandates, single-use plastic and foam bans, and early-stage right-to-repair activity following a congressional hearing last month.
Advanced, or chemical recycling remains contested, he said. Petrochemical companies are seeking exemptions from Clean Air Act rules that would otherwise treat some facilities as incinerators. However, financial struggles at several such facilities over the past 18 months have eased some of that pressure in Washington, he added.
His takeaway for waste and recycling companies: plan for a state-by-state compliance patchwork rather than a uniform federal standard, and track pending litigation closely, since court rulings, not agency rulemaking, are likely to determine the scope of PFAS liability and the durability of state EPR programs for the foreseeable future.
