AF&PA joins NAW lawsuit in Oregon

The American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA), Washington, has filed to take part in the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors’ (NAW’s) lawsuit against government entities in Oregon regarding the state’s enforcement of its Recycling Modernization Act (RMA), which established a statewide extended producer responsibility program that began July 1, 2025.

The NAW, also based in Washington, secured a preliminary injunction in February blocking Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) from enforcing the law on its members until the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon rules on a pair of claims at a hearing scheduled for July 13. Multiple NAW claims were dismissed in February.

The AF&PA is seeking a similar stoppage to the law’s enforcement until the July hearing.

“Extended producer responsibility policies continue to move in the wrong direction,” AF&PA President and CEO Heidi Brock says in a statement. “In states like Oregon, EPR is poised to result in escalating fees, limited transparency and added complexity while failing to recognize the existing, highly effective paper recycling system.”

The paper industry continuously invests to improve recycling and has a significant stake throughout the recycling value chain, Brock says, adding that industry stakeholders design products for recycling, expand mill-based infrastructure that utilizes recycled paper and operate more than 100 material recovery facilities (MRFs).

“Rather than penalizing materials like paper and paper packaging that are already widely recycled, policymakers should prioritize approaches that build on existing success and deliver measurable improvements,” Brock says. “Treating all materials the same, regardless of recycling performance, ignores decades of progress and distorts recycling markets.

“Paper’s strong recycling track record demonstrates that effective systems already exist. AF&PA continues to urge policymakers to support recycling policies that are fair, effective and grounded in data—not blanket mandates that add cost and discourage innovation.”

When the NAW initially filed its lawsuit on July 30 of last year, it said the EPR law missed the target in terms of encouraging a circular economy and modernizing the state’s recycling program. The organization claimed the law as enacted is unconstitutional, creates new mandates, inhibits interstate commerce and fails at its primary goal of encouraging circularity.

“Rather than encourage sustainability through a uniform and transparent system where compliance burdens are shared across industries, Oregon chose to shift the burden to the parts of the supply chain that have little to no control over decisions to design, reduce, reuse or recycle a product,” NAW President and CEO Eric Hoplin said after the court granted its injunction in February.

The suit also describes Oregon’s chosen producer responsibility organization, the Circular Action Alliance (CAA), as enforcing a law that “mandates producers to sign contracts with a single approved private organization, giving up their economic freedom and due process rights.”

Responding to the February ruling, the DEQ said that under the RMA, producers of packaging materials are required to pay fees to help cover the cost of those materials to the state’s recycling system and fund improvements to modernize and expand recycling opportunities. CAA collects those fees and is charged with implementing the EPR program under DEQ’s oversight.

“Oregon is known as a leader in recycling and is the first in the nation to implement this approach to recycling that brings many parties together to share the costs of recycling improvements,” DEQ Administrator Jen Parrott said at the time. “Extended producer responsibility programs that reduce the burden on consumers are prevalent in Oregon and around the world, and we’re certain it can work for recycling.”