Dive Brief:
- CalRecycle on Friday withdrew proposed regulations from the Office of Administrative Law’s review for implementing SB 54, the state’s source reduction and extended producer responsibility for packaging law.
- The agency announced it wants to make revisions to “improve clarity,” particularly related to packaging for food and agricultural commodities.
- CalRecycle intends to open another 15-day comment period. The agency noted that despite the additional delay, statutory deadlines are unchanged, with program implementation expected in January 2027.
Dive Insight:
This latest delay follows a roller coaster in 2025 for the SB 54 rules.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed SB 54 back in 2022. The law includes overarching requirements pegged to 2032 to cut single-use plastic packaging food service ware by 25%; recycle 65% of single-use plastic packaging and food service ware; and ensure 100% of single-use packaging and plastic food service ware is recyclable or compostable. The law also uniquely stipulates that producers collectively pay $500 million a year for 10 years, starting in 2027, to fund environmental mitigation.
Last March, up against a deadline when regulations from 2024 were poised to be finalized, Newsom directed CalRecycle to restart the rulemaking process, citing cost concerns for businesses and consumers. Similarly to now, CalRecycle at the time affirmed that the implementation timeline would not change. The agency shared new draft rules mid-year, with some advocates flagging concerns with exemptions in the months that followed. Feedback and revisions continued into the fall.
CalRecycle wrote in its announcement Friday that it “remains committed to implementing this bold recycling law in a way that achieves its goals of reducing plastic waste and supporting a circular economy while also minimizing costs for small businesses and working families as much as possible.”
State Sen. Ben Allen, who authored the legislation, called the additional delay “entirely avoidable,” but celebrated the opportunity to tighten exemptions and provide more clarity.
“I continue to encourage the Department and Administration to reconsider their proposal to allow broad, sweeping exemptions that would undermine the program and increase costs for ratepayers,” he said in a statement. “The law provides producers with a clear path to ensure that all covered packaging complies.”
“Local governments are continuing to pass along higher rates because of the challenges plastics continue to pose on their refuse infrastructure. I look forward to working with my colleagues and the Administration to get this right and get it across the finish line once and for all,” Allen said.
Anja Brandon, the Ocean Conservancy's director of plastics policy, said she was not surprised by the withdrawal.
“The draft proposed would have gone beyond CalRecycle’s authority by creating a sweeping categorical exclusion for food and agricultural packaging — effectively a loophole that would have allowed producers to continue putting vast amounts of plastic packaging into the marketplace, completely undermining SB 54's goals and success,” Brandon said in an emailed statement.
“This reset is an important opportunity for the administration to eliminate categorical exclusions altogether and ensure the regulations align with the statute’s intent,” Brandon said.
Circular Action Alliance is the producer responsibility organization helping to implement the program in California. Producers were responsible for filing data from 2023 with CAA in late 2025, despite rules not yet being finalized. CAA is expected to submit its program plan in mid-2026 for review by the SB 54 advisory board. Once the plan is approved, the program is expected to become active in 2027.
CalRecycle also recently shared an updated covered material categories list for items that fall under SB 54’s purview. As part of that update, for the first time the agency estimated the recycling rate for each category, with most materials falling vastly short of SB 54’s future 65% recycling threshold.
