Dive Brief:
- The Biodegradable Products Institute announced that CalRecycle has granted an extension pushing back an effective date under California law AB 1201 that would have restricted sales of compostable packaging in the state come 2026. The updated date is now June 30, 2027.
- AB 1201 stipulated that products labeled “compostable” must be allowed in compost as approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program. But the relevant body at USDA has not yet updated its standards to address that issue.
- “The work is far from over, as this delay doesn’t provide much additional runway for companies that need regulatory certainty to develop compostable packaging solutions, which can take years,” BPI said in a LinkedIn post. “We’ll continue working both in California and at USDA to get a permanent fix.”
Dive Insight:
The lack of concrete action in the lead-up to 2026 by USDA was a point of stress for BPI and sellers of compostable packaging. AB 1201 is especially important because SB 54, California’s extended producer responsibility for packaging law, stipulates that by 2032, all single-use packaging and plastic food ware must be recyclable or compostable.
Alex Truelove, BPI’s legislation and advocacy manager, said in an email that the extension in California “does not change our petition to the USDA and the need to ultimately update federal rules for allowable inputs in organic agriculture.”
CalRecycle Director Zoe Heller sent a letter June 11 to BPI Executive Director Rhodes Yepsen addressing BPI’s outreach on the issue from December 2024.
The agency said it anticipates that the National Organics Standards Board’s Crops Subcommittee “will publish a proposal related to the allowability of synthetic substances in advance of the NOSB’s fall 2025 meeting (October 22 – 24, 2025), at which the NOSB will vote on that proposal.”
“If the proposal is approved, the NOSB will then submit to the NOP a corresponding recommendation to initiate rulemaking,” Heller continued. But those efforts were not expected to conclude by the previous Jan. 1, 2026, deadline.
“That fluid status of stakeholders’ legal obligations would present a significant risk of market disruption and exacerbate consumers’ confusion over what types of products are compostable,” CalRecycle said in explaining the extension.
CalRecycle noted there cannot be extensions beyond Jan. 1, 2031.
