Members of the California extended producer responsibility for packaging advisory board have identified dozens of barriers to implementation and offered up possible solutions in a recent report.
Under the law, the SB 54 advisory board was tasked with providing recommendations to address key barriers in diverting covered materials, minimizing plastic leakage into the environment, reducing reliance on virgin materials, improving pathways for reusable packaging, refillable systems and sustainable product alternatives, and ensuring that producer responsibility organizations adequately cover costs incurred by local jurisdictions.
The barriers and solutions report was finalized at the board’s May 16 meeting, after the group ran out of time at the April 18 meeting.
The report largely focuses on “advancing a circular economy for packaging and foodware,” the authors wrote, and “provides recommendations to transition from a linear system for managing packaging and foodware to one that prioritizes resource recovery, sustainable packaging, and waste prevention.” It’s intended to help PRO Circular Action Alliance create a program plan to implement EPR for packaging under SB 54.
Overall, the report found that achieving a circular economy will require making consistent recycling guidelines for consumers, standardizing packaging design and labeling, and supporting sufficient responsible end markets for recycled materials, as well as expanding composting services and scaling up reuse, refill and source reduction.
“The PRO plan should clearly describe key milestones in the transition from single-use foodware to foodware that is actually reused, recycled or composted, as this will have a significant impact on reducing the amount of foodware leaked or littered,” the report added.
Recyclability
Looking first to recyclability, the report flagged a number of barriers, including limited available data and consumer education issues such as inconsistent guidelines, lack of standardized labels, multifamily residence access and lack of trust.
Insufficient end markets are also a barrier to recycling, as are the supply-demand gap between recycled plastic resin and virgin plastic resin and the “lack of alignment and absence of standardized criteria for waste brokers on acceptable contamination levels.”
Outdated infrastructure, diverse packaging designs and confusion around regulations also play a role, according to the report.
The board suggested improving data collection at the state level, creating consistent labeling and recycling guidelines that are tailored to multifamily residences and disadvantaged groups, investing in long-term end market development and infrastructure updates, and standardizing packaging types, with an emphasis on mono-material designs.
“A balanced approach, combining financial support, regulatory enforcement, and consumer education, is critical to achieving the state’s waste diversion goals,” the group wrote.
Compostability
The advisory board highlighted four barriers to increasing composting in California. The first is rising cost due to packaging contamination, largely due to “wish cycling” of plastics that are not compostable or plastics that are marked compostable but still cause contamination, which has led many composters to stop accepting all compostable packaging.
A solution would be clear labeling and enforcement for compostable packaging, including “uniform markings, colors, and wording to aid identification and processing,” more product testing and better consumer education.
Lack of access to composting facilities – or facilities that are at capacity – is a barrier that can be solved with local government collaboration, end market development and building new facilities, along with providing financial incentives and streamlined permitting processes for new composting operations.
There should be more funding and incentives for better compostable packaging design and testing, the board noted, and, finally, California should work to align its standards with the National Organic Program regulations.
“Expanding and upgrading composting collection and processing infrastructure will be crucial to managing the increasing volume of food and compostable materials effectively,” the board wrote.
“By implementing these measures, California can create a scalable and sustainable system that integrates compostable materials into the circular economy, reducing landfill waste and strengthening resource recovery.”
Reuse, refill and source reduction
Lack of data, high costs, low accessibility and limited incentives are all holding back the development of reuse and refill systems in California, the report noted, along with “resource-intensive washing, sanitization, and maintenance of reusable foodware.”
Reusable packaging also faces stricter standards compared to single-use alternatives, slowing down replacement.
Looking at source reduction, the board pointed out that the first requirement in statute is set to take effect in 2027, “before any producer has had the opportunity to report data.”
“As a result, the 2027 target is unrealistic and will likely be missed,” the board warned. In addition, there’s a lack of comprehensive tracking for source reduction efforts, such as lightweighting and elimination.
To address those problems, collaboration with retailers is key to getting reusables on shelves, as is funding the rollout of needed infrastructure and reassessing the required number of cycles for an item to be classified as reusable, “as the current threshold may be impractically high,” the board found.
To speed up adoption of reuse and refill, the PRO should focus on industries with high-frequency purchases and use, such as online purchase platforms with local delivery, medical and lab delivery services, personal care products and detergents and subscription-based models with established reverse logistics, such as meal-kit services.
Prioritizing closed-venue systems, such as schools, universities, concert and sports venues, as well as localized hubs and local laboratory specimen testing would also help, according to the report, as “controlled environments facilitate efficient reuse and collection logistics.”
Cost coverage
The reimbursement of local jurisdictions underpins EPR, and the advisory board called out several possible barriers to fulfilling the payments, such as how to reach communities that didn’t engage in the needs assessment and how to educate communities that may not understand which costs are eligible.
“Local jurisdiction staff need to be able to understand and articulate to their elected officials and communities how costs related to SB 54 implementation are being paid for and who is paying those costs,” the report wrote.
Working with organizations that represent local governments can help with outreach, the board suggested, and clear and transparent guidelines and records are essential. Municipalities and recycling service providers also have limited time and resources, so reimbursement systems should be streamlined and not a heavy lift, the board added.
Board members suggested ensuring the system is user-friendly and accommodates different jurisdictional needs, such as direct cost reimbursement versus performance-based models. It should also offer advance payment options for jurisdictions that lack upfront capital and the option for them to assign payments directly to their recycling service providers, or RSPs.
“Proactive education and effective coordination with local governments and RSPs will be critical in ensuring that the law’s implementation is fair, efficient, and beneficial for all stakeholders,” the board wrote.
Plastic pollution
The fifth section covered plastic leaking into the environment. Some barriers to stopping plastic pollution are the amount of plastics produced, financial incentives that favor virgin plastic over recycled, and regulatory challenges “due to the flexibility of plastic production methods and facilities, which can be altered to shift production based on market demands.” It can be difficult for policy to address production when methods can change and no longer be technically covered under policy.
In addition, while SB 54 focuses on packaging and foodware, broader policies are needed to address plastics in other sectors, according to the report, such as construction, agriculture, transportation and consumer goods.
The board suggested international collaboration through the United Nations and other global initiatives to curb overproduction, regulating “high-leakage plastic products,” increasing recycled content mandates, creating mechanisms to address the gap between virgin and recycled plastic costs, and strengthening enforcement measures.
The report also called on the PRO to “ensure that deceiving practices and false recycling solutions such as chemical recycling and mass balance schemes are not invested in” and to “ensure environmental justice by not allowing such chemical recycling facilities to be sited in disadvantaged communities.”
The report included over 100 pages of responses from MRFs, local governments and other groups across the state in the appendices.
A version of this story appeared in Resource Recycling on May 30.
