A bill with a three-month fuse
The Extended Producer Responsibility Scheme for Packaging (No Time to Waste) Bill 2026 is a private senator's bill, sponsored by Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson, introduced in the Senate on 13 May 2026 and referred the next day to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee. The committee received 57 submissions, held a public hearing in Sydney on 26 June, holds another in Canberra on 20 July, and reports by 6 August 2026.
The mechanism, from the bill text, is blunt. The minister must make rules under section 92 of the existing Recycling and Waste Reduction Act 2020 establishing an extended producer responsibility scheme for packaging, and those rules must take effect on the day after three months from commencement. A "responsible person" is anyone who manufactures, imports or distributes packaging for commercial purposes.
The scheme's legislated objectives are the National Packaging Targets in harder form. Where the current voluntary targets were due in 2025 and missed on every line, the bill would require all packaging to be reusable, recyclable or compostable, 70 per cent of plastic packaging recycled or composted, and all packaging to carry at least 50 per cent recycled content by 2030, with a new floor the voluntary framework never had: at least 30 per cent Australian recycled content. The objectives also cover phasing out materials and additives that impede recycling, eco-modulated fees that reward recyclable design, and mandatory disposal labelling.
The government's own numbers point the same way
When the environment department (DCCEEW) consulted on three reform options in October 2024, it received 426 responses; industry and business were the largest group at 148 responses (35 per cent), ahead of individuals and households (142), government (46) and representative bodies (45). The department's February 2025 consultation summary records the result plainly: over 80 per cent of respondents preferred Commonwealth regulation of packaging, 55 per cent preferred Option 3, an EPR scheme with mandatory requirements, rising to 65 per cent counting respondents who backed Option 3 in a hybrid form. Just 4 per cent wanted Option 1, strengthening the current voluntary co-regulatory arrangement.
The same summary records strong support for mandatory national minimum recycled-content thresholds, mandatory on-pack recyclability labelling, and a national ban on a short list of problematic packaging inputs it names as carbon black, oxo-degradables and PFAS. Two of those three are decisions made at the design and print stage: carbon black is a pigment choice, and PFAS turns up in grease-resistant coatings. Whatever form the final rules take, that shortlist is a preview of substrate and ink conversations printers will be having with packaging clients.
The covenant body has stopped defending the status quo
The Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation has administered the voluntary co-regulatory system since 2018, and its own position is the clearest signal in this story. In its National Packaging Targets Beyond 2025 statement, alongside the missed-target scoreboard (86 per cent of packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable against a 100 per cent target; 20 per cent of plastic packaging recycled or composted against 70; 44 per cent average recycled content against 50), APCO states that on the current trajectory Australia will keep missing the targets without structural reform, and that it "is advocating for nationally consistent regulation and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) settings that strengthen participation, accountability and enforcement".
A 13 January 2026 APCO release puts numbers on why the voluntary system stalled: Australia uses more than 1.3 million tonnes of plastic packaging a year and more than 1 million tonnes ends up landfilled or littered, while Australian-made recycled plastic can run around 50 per cent dearer than imported virgin resin. In a voluntary system, the brands that invest in better packaging are undercut by the ones that do not; mandatory EPR, in APCO's own framing, exists to set a baseline that fixes that. When the body whose entire model is voluntary participation argues for compulsion, the debate about direction is over. What remains open is mechanism and timing.
Where the department actually is
Timing is exactly where the government's process is soft. DCCEEW's reform page (last updated 6 March 2026) shows a review that reported in 2021, a government response in December 2022, a consultation that closed on 29 October 2024, and a department still "considering the feedback". The proposed Design for Kerbside Recyclability Grading Framework remains in stakeholder engagement through 2026, with, in the department's own words, no decision yet on whether it becomes part of new regulations. And the page is explicit that the existing co-regulatory arrangement remains in place until new regulations begin.
That is the gap the bill is aimed at. Private senators' bills rarely become law, and this one may not either; its practical function is to put a public clock on a process that currently has none. The committee's 6 August report will force senators to state positions on mandatory EPR on the record, with the department's own consultation numbers sitting in evidence.
What this means if you print or convert packaging
Every proposal now on the table, the bill, the department's leading consultation option and the covenant body's advocacy position, lands on the same reader: the printer, converter or brand placing packaging on the Australian market. The common elements worth planning for are mandatory recycled-content minimums (with an Australian-content component in at least one live proposal), mandatory on-pack disposal labelling, a banned-inputs shortlist, and fees weighted by how recyclable a pack actually is. Jobs quoted into 2027 and beyond, especially anything laminated, mixed-material or pigmented with carbon black, are the ones to sanity-check now. The material-by-material recovery numbers behind all of this are in our sustainability data story, and the compliance layer a small brand already inherits with its first box is in the custom packaging piece. Flexible plastics remain the exposed flank: a 9 per cent recovery rate against a 70 per cent plastics target is the gap every one of these instruments is built to close, and the soft-plastics levy scheme already shows what levy-funded stewardship looks like in practice.