Critical Minerals and E-Waste: The Next Frontier for EPR
Packaging may be the headline EPR category, but it is not the only one. Across the United States, EPR frameworks are expanding into batteries, electronics, textiles, and the critical minerals embedded within them. This expansion reflects a recognition that the same producer-responsibility logic that applies to cardboard boxes and plastic bottles applies with equal — or greater — force to lithium-ion batteries, circuit boards, and the rare earth elements they contain. For companies operating in electronics, automotive, energy storage, or consumer technology sectors, the EPR compliance landscape is broadening rapidly.
Battery EPR Gains Momentum
The most concrete near-term development is battery EPR. Nebraska enacted the Safe Battery Collection and Recycling Act in 2025, establishing a producer responsibility framework for battery collection and recycling. While packaging EPR has dominated the policy conversation, battery EPR addresses a distinct and growing waste management challenge: the proliferation of lithium-ion batteries in consumer electronics, power tools, e-bikes, and energy storage systems, combined with the fire and safety risks that improperly disposed batteries create in waste management facilities. At the federal level, the U.S. EPA is expected to release a national battery EPR framework report in early 2026, potentially providing a template that additional states could adopt. Battery fires in recycling facilities and waste trucks have become a significant concern for the waste management industry, creating political urgency behind producer responsibility requirements.
California Textiles: SB 707
California has moved beyond packaging into textiles EPR with SB 707, which requires PROs to submit compliance plans by January 1, 2026. Textile waste represents a distinct waste stream — clothing, footwear, linens, and other fabric-based products that are difficult to recycle through conventional infrastructure. SB 707 applies the same producer responsibility framework to textile producers that SB 54 applies to packaging producers: join a PRO, fund collection and recycling infrastructure, and meet performance targets. H2 Compliance noted that New York and Washington are monitoring California's textiles program implementation closely, suggesting that successful implementation could prompt additional states to adopt similar frameworks.
E-Waste and Critical Minerals
Electronic waste EPR is not new — multiple states have had e-waste collection and recycling requirements for over a decade. What is new is the growing policy focus on critical minerals recovery from electronic waste. Lithium, cobalt, nickel, rare earth elements, and other materials essential to batteries, semiconductors, and renewable energy technology are increasingly viewed through a supply chain security lens. The connection between EPR and critical minerals policy is straightforward: if producer responsibility programs can fund and organize the collection and recycling of electronics and batteries, they can simultaneously create domestic sources of critical minerals that reduce dependence on foreign supply chains. This framing — EPR as industrial policy, not just waste management — is gaining traction in policy discussions at both the state and federal level.
Right to Repair: A Parallel Track
Eight states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Texas, and Washington — have enacted Right to Repair laws, which require manufacturers to make parts, tools, and repair documentation available to consumers and independent repair shops. While Right to Repair is not technically EPR, it operates on the same producer-responsibility principle: manufacturers bear responsibility for the full lifecycle of their products, including repairability that extends product life and reduces waste. For electronics manufacturers, Right to Repair and e-waste EPR create overlapping compliance obligations that should be managed as a coordinated strategy rather than as separate regulatory silos.
The Investment Landscape
The expansion of EPR beyond packaging creates opportunities and risks for investors. On the opportunity side, battery recycling infrastructure, critical minerals recovery technology, textile collection and sorting systems, and electronics refurbishment networks all represent investable sectors that EPR legislation directly supports through guaranteed funding flows. Companies like Li-Cycle, Redwood Materials, and Cirba Solutions in the battery recycling space are already positioned to benefit from expanded producer responsibility requirements. On the risk side, electronics manufacturers, battery producers, and textile brands face new cost obligations that will affect margins and require compliance infrastructure investments similar to those packaging companies are making today.
What We Don't Know Yet
Honest disclosure: The intersection of critical minerals policy, e-waste EPR, and federal policy direction involves significant uncertainty. The EPA's anticipated battery EPR framework report has not been released as of this writing, and its scope and recommendations remain unknown. Whether federal battery EPR will preempt or complement state programs like Nebraska's is an open question. The economics of critical minerals recovery from consumer electronics waste — as opposed to industrial or EV battery waste — remain challenging at current volumes. We present the trend lines here because they are real and verifiable, but producers and investors should approach this space with the understanding that regulatory frameworks are still forming and commercial models are still being validated.
Preparing for Multi-Stream EPR
For companies that produce both packaging and electronics, batteries, or textiles, the multi-stream EPR future means managing compliance across product categories as well as across states. The organizational infrastructure — data systems, regulatory tracking, PRO relationships, and internal compliance processes — will need to accommodate different product-specific EPR requirements with different timelines, different PROs, and different performance metrics. The companies that build flexible, category-agnostic compliance platforms now will have a structural advantage as EPR expands from packaging into these adjacent product streams.
Sources: H2 Compliance (Dec 2025); Proskauer (Oct 2025)
Note: This post draws on verified sources for battery EPR (Nebraska's Safe Battery Collection and Recycling Act, EPA framework report), California textiles (SB 707), and Right to Repair (8 named states). Claims about critical minerals recovery economics and federal policy direction are presented as emerging trends with appropriate uncertainty caveats.
Constellation Insights, a division of Trash Club Ventures, provides strategic regulatory intelligence for brands, investors, and operators navigating the circular economy.
