Bottle bill talks gain momentum amid America First buzz, EPR

Packaging Dive reported the development on 2025-11-21. Eager to capture more high-quality material to incorporate into new packaging domestically, leaders from the competing plastic, glass and metal sectors are looking to jointly build on momentum from 2025’s legislative sessions.

The report places the news in a wider commercial context. Efforts to modernize bottle bills are still hamstrung by old myths, according to advocates representing the plastics, glass and metal packaging industries. But evolutions within the U.S. policy landscape amid the Trump administration’s emphasis on domestic manufacturing and the launch of state extended producer responsibility programs have helped build momentum in a productive year for these bills,.

For the food sector, the practical implications extend beyond the immediate announcement. “We are fans of many different policies to improve plastics recycling. Bottle deposits are one of them,” said Kate Bailey, APR’s chief policy officer. “Sixty percent of what we collect for plastic recycling, in terms of PET bottles, comes from the 10 states that have bottle deposits.”.

Attention now turns to how companies, customers and regulators respond. Recycling refunds, a newer moniker for these policies, are “hands down the best policy in terms of getting the consumer to see an economic incentive on their container and recycle it,” said Mike Smaha, CMI’s vice president of government affairs. One new catalyst for bottle bill discussions this year has been the start of packaging EPR programs, led by Oregon.