California’s packaging law survived the hard part: bringing everyone to the table
by Wes Carter, President of Atlantic Packaging and founder of A New Earth Project
You might expect the president of a packaging company to oppose a law like California’s SB 54, the most ambitious packaging Extended Producer Responsibility law in the U.S. Instead, I volunteered to help implement it.
For the past three years, I served on the inaugural Advisory Board for the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act. The law makes producers responsible for what happens to packaging after it has served its purpose.
My time on the board did not always go smoothly. The process was contentious—publicly and sometimes painfully. Regulations were drafted and revised several times. Deadlines moved. Industry representatives, environmental advocates and state officials each walked away frustrated at different points.
But I have come to believe that the turbulence was not evidence of failure. It was the friction required to make progress on an extraordinarily complicated set of challenges to reduce plastic pollution and dramatically improve recycling.
I joined the board because of a conviction that has shaped Atlantic Packaging for years and led us to create A New Earth Project: packaging should work more like nature, with materials designed to remain part of a regenerative system rather than becoming waste.
We have also learned that no company can build a circular economy on its own. That requires cooperation among the people who design, manufacture, use, collect, process and regulate packaging. SB 54 is the nation’s most ambitious attempt to bring those interests together at the scale of the world’s fourth-largest economy.
Extended producer responsibility is a well-established idea. Applying it to packaging, however, means confronting a system that touches nearly every product Californians buy. When a state takes on something that complex, disagreement is inevitable. It should not automatically be mistaken for bad faith. This is what the sausage-making of strong policy necessarily looks like.
The advisory board includes representatives from local government, recycling and waste management, composting, environmental and community organizations, scientific fields and the packaging industry. Each arrived with a different understanding of the problem, and a different idea of what success should look like.
Those perspectives did not always align, and that made our conversations more valuable.
I have spent my career inside the packaging supply chain. The board put me in sustained conversation with ocean scientists studying microplastics, professionals responsible for municipal waste systems and community advocates describing environmental impacts they see firsthand. At the same time, industry representatives could explain the constraints that shape packaging decisions, from raw materials and manufacturing to distribution, product protection and end-of-life management.
One conversation that stayed with me involved a discussion about compostable packaging. Like many in the packaging industry, I initially viewed compostables as an important part of the solution. The material science is improving, and the intent is positive. During testimony from local waste and recycling professionals, however, I heard firsthand how limited composting infrastructure remained in many communities and how packaging designed for one recovery pathway could create challenges when that pathway didn’t actually exist at scale. It didn’t change my belief that innovation matters, but it changed how I think about implementation. I came away with a greater appreciation that success isn’t defined solely by designing a better package. It requires building the systems that allow that package to succeed in the real world.
That kind of exchange matters. None of us can see the entire system from where we stand. When people who genuinely care about solving a problem listen before they argue, the quality of the solutions improves.
Organizations need a North Star. Without a vision, innovation has no direction. But vision must eventually be translated into action, and that is the threshold SB 54 has now reached.
California’s permanent regulations took effect in May, and the state’s producer responsibility organization submitted its initial program plan in June. The plan is now open for public comment, and Californians who want a voice in how this system gets built have until August 14 to weigh in. The work is moving from debating the framework to building the infrastructure, technologies, incentives, markets, and partnerships needed to make it function.
This transition will test everyone involved.
Infrastructure takes time to develop. Technology improves through continual refinement. Markets adjust gradually. Policy works best when it combines ambitious goals with a practical understanding of how change occurs. Evolution can be slow, but it is worth the journey. After three years on this board, I believe that more strongly than ever.
People sometimes ask why a packaging company would support extended producer responsibility at all. We support it because our industry needs mechanisms that acknowledge the unintended consequences of past practices and create pathways toward better solutions.
But policy is most effective when it also creates conditions in which innovation can thrive. Solar energy did not become mainstream because of a single breakthrough or mandate. Its growth required technological advances, layers of public policy, investment and private-sector innovation working together over many years. Packaging requires the same patient, layered approach.
Packaging companies understand manufacturing and product performance. Scientists deepen our knowledge of environmental harm. Waste and recycling professionals understand infrastructure. Community organizations understand how environmental policy affects people’s lives. Government establishes the framework that can bring those perspectives together.
The advisory board’s most important accomplishment to date was creating a place where those perspectives could genuinely meet. That foundation may ultimately matter as much as any individual regulation because the next decade of implementation will depend on it.
California has demonstrated the courage to lead. The law and its implementation are stronger because people were willing to engage, challenge their assumptions and improve the system together, even though it will continue to take time.
The road ahead will continue to be bumpy. That should not discourage us. Meaningful change emerges when people, organizations and communities continue to move toward a shared goal even when they disagree about how to get there.
For me, that is what the past three years have been about: learning how to bring people together, how to build a better system and how to align innovation with a shared commitment to healthier communities and a healthier planet. If we can continue doing that, we will leave this world better for generations to come.