AI audit systems could become a compliance tool under EPR, but who pays for them is still being worked out.

From Michigan's fraud cases to Hawaii's scaled-back audits, a new CRI guidebook maps where the 10 US deposit states are losing money and what they can do about it.

WM's Ryan Nordt says e-commerce, battery fires and state EPR laws are reshaping what reaches the company's facilities, and that recycled-content requirements could be the policy that pulls more material through to domestic end markets.

Battery fires are pushing recycling toward becoming "an uninsurable industry," NSAC founder Heidi Sanborn said.

Decades of voluntary packaging work have hit an economic wall. EPR and stronger regulation are what will move the needle.

The city of St. Louis has moved from free alley recycling to a new model to combat its recycling contamination rates.

California will pull disposable nicotine vapes from store shelves by 2028 under a law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, while a companion bill gives schools a hazardous waste route for vapes confiscated from students.

NAW is challenging an Oregon judge's ruling in favor of the state's extended producer responsibility law.

Newsom signed a battery EPR expansion and a nitrous oxide sales ban but vetoed a bill setting spending rules for SB 54's $5 billion plastic mitigation fund.

The BRACE Act would let lithium-ion battery recyclers store batteries on site under universal waste rules and give EPA 18 months to write a new battery rule.

Colorado's producer responsibility organizations move to implement the state's extended producer responsibility law.

The new law's cartons and film targets could add 100,000 tons of plastic contamination to California's paper exports annually, a panelist said during a recent panel.

With the California legislature adjourned, packaging, food-waste and EPR advocates are watching a single date, Sept. 30, to see which of their priorities become law.

The Circular Action Alliance (CAA) has had a relatively short, but very impactful, history as it takes a key role in EPR programs in several states.

Reusable cup and foodware programs are expanding across US venues, arenas and festivals, but the systems driving them look little like their European counterparts.

California's vape ban was written to close the exact loophole that let disposable devices survive a ban in the UK.

Flexible film, generating 550,000 tons/year of waste, has end markets for only about 10% of it, panelists said at a CRRA conference roundtable.

California's list of SB 54 responsible end markets won't exist until four days before the state's Jan. 1 compliance deadline, and CAA is warning jurisdictions not to rush their exemption filings in the meantime.

Of California's 56 SB 54-covered packaging categories, Alameda County jurisdictions collect fewer than a third of them uniformly, and the clock on compliance is running out.

Editor's note: Policy for batteries and electronics is among the sessions at the 2026 E-Scrap Conference, Oct. 26-28 in New Orleans. Register today! A