U.S. packaging stakeholders have learned a lot this past year since Oregon became the first state to begin implementing an extended producer responsibility for packaging law. Yet the industry is still very early in the journey, according to speakers at SPC Impact in Nashville, Tennessee, from April 22-23. These were some of their insights on the direction EPR is headed.

Regulations and performance demands may only get stricter

It’s time for some tough love. “Expect that packaging regulations will stay as strict as they are today — or get stricter,” according to the Sustainable Packaging Coalition’s 2026 trends report, which the group shared during the event.

Whereas voluntary commitments once drove the sustainable packaging landscape, the space has now “entered a new, non-optional, operational phase” that is “defined by performance — how packaging moves through collection, sortation, and reprocessing — rather than promises.”

“Plan for packaging fees to increase significantly, particularly for difficult-to-recycle materials, with real consequences for falling short,” the report continues. “Assume a sizable investment in recycling infrastructure will be needed, and that your company will be part of the group paying for it.”

Treating sustainability ambition as a competitive advantage will be critical. “Compliance will keep you in the game. Designing for the big picture future of sustainable packaging will determine who leads it.”

Data organization must further level up

As producers report packaging data to comply with EPR laws, it’s starting to become clear that “we need better data — all of us,” said Brie Seferian, senior manager for extended producer responsibility for Mondelēz International’s packaging in North America. Relatively speaking, companies are still at the beginning of the process of getting data under control.

Large companies such as Mondelēz have acquired numerous businesses over the years “and everyone’s in a different system,” which has meant hunting down old spreadsheets and PDFs, Seferian said.

There’s “a lesson, I think, for the entire industry,” said Seferian. For years, data may have been shared between a packaging engineer and supplier, or an external manufacturer and procurement. “That just is not going to work that way in the future,” she said.

“I think we're all going to have to get all of our systems integrated better to be able to record these things consistently over time, and where we don’t all have a panic attack when somebody leaves” a company, she said. “We're just all going to have to really level that up, and that’s going to take a little while.” 

The meaning of sustainable design will evolve

Where does packaging sustainability stand in 2026, in light of packaging EPR? “I think the honest answer is that packaging sustainability today feels in flux,” said Amanda Humes, director of packaging stewardship at Conagra Brands.

“It's no longer just about voluntary commitments or isolated improvements within one company’s portfolio. Increasingly, it's about demonstrating accountability across the entire value chain,” Humes said. “For years, we defined packaging sustainability by these individual design attributes” — perhaps a lighter-weight package or positive findings in a life cycle assessment.

That’s evolving. “These things are still important, but EPR is increasingly changing the conversation from what a package is to how a package performs after it leaves the brand’s control,” Humes said.

There’s now “a magnifying glass on what companies mean when they say the word ‘recyclable,’” Humes said. “It is no longer just about meeting a technical definition. There's pressure to demonstrate real world recyclability outcomes.”

Likewise, there’s greater scrutiny on material swaps. It’s not as simple as a transition from plastic to paper, for instance: It requires thinking about impacts within supply chains, effects on shelf life, and more.

“If you just substitute one material for another without thinking about that entire system’s outcome, you're not eliminating environmental impact. You’re just shifting it somewhere else in the system,” she said. To be “truly sustainable” will require further time, work, infrastructure improvements and R&D collaboration throughout the value chain.

“So has packaging sustainability been revolutionized by EPR? In some ways, yes; in some ways, it's already forcing real consequences that companies can't ignore,” she said. “But in other ways, we’re still really early days.”

Consumer trust will be a metric of success

The last 18 months “feels sort of like 18 years” as producer responsibility organization Circular Action Alliance has scaled rapidly to help implement packaging EPR laws in the U.S., said CEO Jeff Fielkow. Staff is “160 strong and growing,” he said.

Five years from now, Fielkow hopes that producers will feel that CAA has been a good steward and ambassador for their funds, “and we did what we said we were going to do, which all comes down to making an impact.”

Likewise, “I would love to be on this stage and be able to tell you what a good EPR looks like,” he said. “It's not shifting dollars from a producer to reimbursement,” it's investing into and building a better system. And in building it, success includes being able to say “we brought everybody along” — including producers small and large, NGOs and disadvantaged communities, he said.

Another core piece will be consumer trust in the system. “At the end of the day ... the consumer is going to be like, ‘Why does that matter to me?’” he said.

“We're seeing this in Oregon already with the new municipal drop-off centers that are being opened,” Fielkow highlighted. That’s a case where a consumer can say, “‘You told me this was going to happen, and now I see it happening, and it makes my life easier,’” he said.

There’s a lot of friction for consumers around understanding recycling and materials management. “Success for me would be to be able to point to specific materials that we can show the consumer behavior is shifting,” he said.

Red states are coming

The Tennessee Waste to Jobs Act, an EPR bill championed for multiple years by state Sen. Heidi Campbell, was sidelined in March. Although it offers more leeway than packaging EPR laws elsewhere, it still faced opposition from industry. Campbell is looking ahead to next year and spoke about momentum in her home state — and potentially the rest of the Southeast — during SPC Impact.

“There is no reason why economic prosperity and environmentalism have to be diametrically opposed,” she said. While Campbell says using terms like “climate change” don’t get her anywhere in the Republican-dominated state legislature, the premise of developing a better recycling system from the ground up on Tennessee’s terms can solve urgent business and resident issues.

In this case, there’s “this anvil hanging over our heads” — landfills being at capacity, and Tennessee law makes it difficult to build more.

“I do think when you're pushing something like this, it's very important to have the urgency of some kind of a conflict that needs to be solved right away,” she said. “One of the many problems with the legislative landscape is there's always a tendency to try and kick things down the road.”

Tennessee has the potential to spur extended impact. “Red states usually fall in line,” which could be an advantage when it comes to momentum for this sort of policy, she said. “If we pass Tennessee Waste to Jobs, we have a very good shot of having Texas Waste to Jobs, Alabama Waste to Jobs, Kentucky Waste to Jobs.”