Oregon’s Recycling and Extended Producer Responsibility Programs Experience Rocky Rollout

Key Points
Extended Producer Responsibility policies should be transparent in how fees are set, scaled according to costs to society and recyclability, and used to make recycling more efficient so more resources are saved.
Oregon’s Extended Producer Responsibility program to incentivize recycling does so with a complicated series of regulations, including confidentially determined tax rates on various materials derived from a revenue goal. Concealing how the taxes are determined and deriving them from a revenue goal, rather than actual costs of each material, is unprincipled and undermines the system’s efficacy.
Empowering a non-governmental Producer Responsibility Organization to administer the program can be a viable option, but a poorly structured organization risks allowing some producers to shift burdens to other producers and consumers.
Oregon’s recycling program, as currently designed, risks burdening the economy with a subsidy for wasteful processes rather than actually saving resources by enabling efficient recycling.
In August 2021, Oregon lawmakers passed the Plastic Pollution and Recycling Modernization Act (PPRMA). The law made Oregon the first US state to adopt a comprehensive EPR framework for packaging and paper products. The Circular Action Alliance (CAA) was approved as Oregon’s sole EPR program PRO in 2023.
CAA is the nation’s largest PRO, acting as the state-approved PRO in California, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington. CAA developed and revised Oregon’s EPR program plan, including fee structures, collection system improvements, and recycling targets. CAA finalized Oregon’s EPR program requirements in 2024, though rules continue to change.
Beginning in 2025, distributors and manufacturers were required to join the PRO and begin paying fees based on the type and recyclability of their packaging. In total, CAA expects to collect roughly than $190 million in fees in the first year, growing to nearly $300 million in year three of the program. Some of these revenues are remitted to the state for administration, but most are spent directly by CAA to implement the PPRMA.
CAA sets fees on 60 materials, including paper, glass, aluminum, steel, plastic, and wood products. Rates range from $0.05 per pound for paper products to $1.38 per pound for rigid plastic foam containers and cushioning. Most producers of covered products are required to join the PRO and pay the fees. Smaller producers with less than $10 million in gross revenue, or those that sell less than 5 metric tons of covered products per year, can opt for a flat fee of between $1,200 and $5,800 based on weighted tons of material. Small producers with less than $5 million in gross annual revenue or with less than 1 metric ton of covered products produced per year are exempt.
We provide an expanded table of all CAA’s fees and rates in Table 1. The fees are also subject to discounts according to a different table of bonuses and incentives.
The PPRMA mandates an incredibly complex system of requirements, goals, and timelines. These complexities are in addition to Oregon’s existing extensive legislation surrounding solid waste recovery generally and eight separate responsibility programs for other products.
The PPRMA covers everything from the basics of how to determine who the “producer” of covered products is to the requirements of the PRO fee structure and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion mandates for the recycling industry. The minutiae have consequences. For instance, CAA and Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) have conflicted on whether garbage bags should count as “packaging.” Including garbage bags increases the amount of additional packaging that must be recycled (by about 5,000 tons) to meet a separate 25 percent statewide recycling goal by 2028.
Overall, this system is neither simple nor transparent. The DEQ-approved Program Plan from the CAA is nearly 400 pages—without the confidential portions. The CAA publicizes its rates, but keeps the methodology used to determine them confidential.
CAA is obligated to comply with statutory requirements for the fee structure. It must differentiate between types and forms of materials and ensure that they are proportional to the cost of their handling. The fees must be graduated to incentivize producers to change their production methods and calibrated to fund the PRO’s financial obligations under the PPRMA.