Farm groups oppose Oregon recycling fees with ‘no public oversight’ | Capital Press

Farm groups oppose Oregon recycling fees with ‘no public oversight’

Published 8:00 am Friday, June 12, 2026

Agriculture groups claim an Oregon program meant to increase recycling of product packaging is eating into farm profits and want state regulators to suspend its enforcement.

Lawmakers passed the state’s “Recycling Modernization Act” in 2021 but it only became effective last year and critics argue its implementation has been “lackluster.”

Certain growers and other product producers are required to raise money through fees to ensure their packaging materials are recycled under the program.

But the Oregon Farm Bureau and the Oregonians for Food and Shelter agribusiness group argue the fees are set by a “third-party entity” using a “confidential, proprietary methodology” with “no government accountability.”

“There’s no public oversight over who is getting charged how much, or what the overall budget should be,” said Katie Murray, executive director of Oregonians for Food and Shelter. “It’s not how our members should be paying into a regulatory program.”

A designated “producer responsibility organization” — the Circular Action Alliance nonprofit — sets the fee formula, which lacks transparency and doesn’t protect farmers from “arbitrary or unrecoverable costs,” according to the agriculture groups.

A representative of the Circular Action Alliance was not available for comment as of press time.

Farmers who pack their own crops, such as berries, are subject to the fees directly, but they also may end up paying more for inputs, such as pesticides, whose manufacturers are also subject to the fees, Murray said.

“Growers are going to get hit from multiple directions for multiple stacked-up fees from this program,” she said.

Proponents of the Recycling Modernization Act, which passed as Senate Bill 582 five years ago, argued that it’s an extension of the same approach that Oregon uses for recycling cans and bottles, which also initially faced resistance but has since been widely embraced.

“Polls show that our constituents support recycling and are not happy with the current status,” said former Sen. Lee Beyer, D-Springfield. “They don’t like the idea of their recycling going into the dump. This bill begins to address those concerns.”

The program’s opponents counter that farmers oftentimes already contribute to recycling efforts, such as with clamshell containers for berries that incorporate recycled materials, so the fees are duplicative of those efforts.

“The fees could exceed what the average berry farmer earns in a year, putting some farms at risk of closure and driving up food costs for Oregon families,” said Lauren Kuenzi, government and political affairs director for the Oregon Farm Bureau, during a legislative hearing earlier this year.

Farm groups asked lawmakers to exempt certain packaging for berries and meat from the fees earlier this year, which was opposed by the program’s supporters, who argued it would saddle other manufacturers with higher costs.

That proposed exemption, House Bill 4030, was approved by the House Climate, Energy and Environment Committee but ended up dying in the House Rules Committee earlier this year.

Meanwhile, the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors filed a lawsuit against the program last year and in February won an injunction blocking Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality from enforcing the program against its members.

A federal judge approved that preliminary injunction after finding the lawsuit raised “serious questions” about the merits of the plaintiff’s arguments and determining there’s a “likelihood of irreparable injury” from the program.

A five-day trial in the case is scheduled for July 13, so critics want Oregon regulators to “pause” its enforcement more broadly at least until the matter of the program’s legality is cleared up.

“Place the program on hold until the courts can make a ruling,” Murray said.