After Dan Felton got to work as the new president and CEO at the Flexible Packaging Association (FPA) in November 2024, one of his missions was to increase FPA’s advocacy efforts at the state and federal levels.
His strong background in advocacy work with other organizations had interested the FPA board during the hiring process, so he started laying the groundwork right away. At that time, no one knew who would win the presidential election that November. Since the January inauguration of President Donald J. Trump, advocacy—and communication with FPA members—has been a constant, especially in trying to keep up with the ever-changing tariff landscape.
This summer, FPA convened a tariff work group with the goal of keeping members informed about shifts in trade policies. It also created a new Government Relations Committee (GRC), while expanding its political action committee called FlexPAC® and continuing its advocacy efforts through FPA’s lobbyists in the states and the District of Columbia, say Felton and John Richard, FPA’s director of government relations.
“Advocacy is one of FPA’s pillars, but the board and members want us to be doing more, so John and I have been working on enhancing what FPA already was doing,” Felton says.
Tariffs
FPA expected Trump to focus on tariffs because he had done so in his first term and had talked about them during the campaign in 2024. “We didn’t know to what extent,” Felton says, alluding to the onslaught of on-again/off-again tariffs that followed the spring of 2025 and through the summer.
To keep members informed, Richard started a biweekly e-newsletter called FPA’s Tuesday Tariff Talk to provide an overview of the latest developments. The e-newsletter has shown strong click-through rates, indicating that members are eager to stay on top of developments, Richard says.
The decision was also made to create a tariff working group that includes representatives from FPA member companies, with the goal of monitoring how the changes will affect flexible packaging and then offering advice on future strategies, Richard says.
Companies that operate internationally have personnel responsible for import/export decisions, so the goal was to include them in the monthly working group.
“These are the people who are responsible for complying with the tariffs,” Richard explains.
About three-quarters of the group come from FPA’s converter members, and the rest are supplier or associate members of FPA. The first meeting in June 2025 included an overview of the tariff status and charted a course for the months ahead. The discussions can be complex because FPA has members worldwide, Felton points out.
“We need to provide information to our members so that they can at least understand what’s going on, and then, they can use that information internally and look at what’s best for their business operations,” Felton says.
Although many companies will have personnel who handle logistics, which may include knowledge of international trade, the proposed tariffs create an additional layer of complexity, Richard says.
“This compliance with the tariffs is such an added burden on those positions, where someone might be more of a logistics expert writ large,” Richard says. “So, if they have to comply with ever-changing terms, it is going to be a much larger workload on that position.”
“The Maryland effort was collaborative. Stakeholders really listened to industry and took recommendations into account when drafting the legislation.”
—John Richard, FPA’s director of government relations
Some companies might need to hire consultants or other experts to guide them through similar processes, much like additional help is needed to navigate compliance with the new state packaging extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws, Felton adds.
Expanding Efforts
Meanwhile, the GRC began work over the summer, and it includes leaders from FPA member companies. Generally, the GRC’s goal will be to guide FPA’s government relations strategy and develop policy positions, when needed. While that might lead to formal positions on some issues, less formal approaches might be warranted on other topics, Felton says.
“Sometimes, you don’t need policy positions. Sometimes, it should be a framework or a set of principles,” he explains. Regardless, these approaches will be useful when discussing important issues such as EPR or advanced recycling. With advanced recycling, FPA doesn’t want it banned, as some legislation has sought to do, Felton says as an example.
“But if you start peeling back the layers of advanced recycling, there is more nuance there,” he says. “That is an example of where we should have some clarity from our members if we’re going to be speaking publicly about it. And that is true of other things where we might want more formality in the process and have the members more engaged.”
In the spring, Richard surveyed members to ascertain their biggest concerns, with the top five being EPR, tariffs, “toxics” legislation, advanced recycling, and product labeling laws.
The GRC has used that list as a starting point, but it has been refining it to determine what warrants formal policy positions.
Ongoing Efforts
Meanwhile, FPA’s ongoing advocacy efforts have continued throughout 2025, which has been another busy year for EPR legislation. FPA’s leaders were pleased with the process that led to a new law in Maryland because policymakers listened to the industry’s concerns and included important points advocated by FPA.
“The Maryland effort was collaborative,” Richard says. “Stakeholders really listened to industry and took recommendations into account when drafting the legislation.”
The bill didn’t include hard deadlines or exact fees, and that will make it easier for companies to comply as formal regulations are developed. That showed a shift from California, one of the early adopters of EPR. It had to back off some regulatory deadlines earlier this year after the time frames proved unworkable and Gov. Gavin Newsom expressed concerns about potential costs to consumers.
Maryland regulators also published its needs assessments that included achievable goals for flexible packaging. “It will be good to work with them going forward to set up the program,” Richard adds. The state made clear that its primary goal was to build out its recycling infrastructure, and it wasn’t interested in banning materials or adding non-EPR-related language to the measure.
“That’s the crux of the matter,” Felton says. “If industry and the proponents and the environmental organizations—all of the stakeholders—can have a longer, more thoughtful conversation, we feel we’re going to get a better product.”
Some states, such as New York, refuse to genuinely invite FPA and other industry stakeholders to the table, Felton adds. In Maryland, policymakers were willing to listen to FPA’s discussion about packaging for proteins such as meat and cheese to exempt them from performance requirements for five years while they determine the best ways to package proteins under the new law.
“These companies are willing to pay into the system and pay the fees,” Felton says, adding that they simply needed more time to meet requirements. “That’s an example where FPA specifically was able to contribute to the process and achieve a favorable outcome.”
To date, seven states have enacted EPR laws: California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington. In addition to New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island are seriously considering their own packaging EPR bills this year, and they want to take unique approaches. Rhode Island, for example, has combined its EPR bill with a bottle bill in some of its proposed legislation.
“That is a dynamic we really haven’t had to navigate in the past with EPR, so that is something we have to
work through,” Richard says. Legislators are beginning to communicate with one another as some states have adopted similar EPR definitions. “The definitions are pretty baked in at this point. But we still see some odd variations that could affect our members in unexpected ways.”
Felton suggests that harmonized state systems are a worthy cause for organizations to pursue but will be difficult to obtain, even if there are some agreed-upon approaches. By the end of this year, he explains, there might be at least one more state in the Northeast to pass EPR legislation, and it likely will not be as palatable as the Maryland law.
“I would speculate that we’re not going to like those as much as the last three states that have passed laws, so we will be back again to not having uniformity,” he says. “I could be wrong—stranger things have happened—but that is the way it feels.”
Other Initiatives
FPA’s advocacy efforts continue to be enhanced by a team of outside experts such as longtime federal lobbyists Capitoline Consulting, LLC in Washington, D.C., and Serlin Haley in the states. FPA has also been planning fly-ins, where people from FPA member companies and FPA staff will travel to state capitals or Washington, D.C., to meet with policymakers. One was held in Albany, New York, in the spring, and another is planned for later in September in D.C.
Earlier this year, FPA hired Kyla Fisher to be FPA’s director of regulatory affairs and sustainability because of her background in packaging and sustainability, including working with AMERIPEN—the American Institute for Packaging and the Environment, where Felton was before joining FPA.
FPA’s political action committee—FlexPAC®—has been active since it formed in 2024, as well. The goal is to raise $75,000 by the end of this year, a target that was set partly because FPA was founded 75 years ago, Richard says.
FPA sponsored a fundraiser earlier this year for U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks. The Republican from Iowa is one of the supporters of the bipartisan Strategies to Eliminate Waste and Accelerate Recycling Development (STEWARD). STEWARD is a combination of the Recycling Infrastructure and Accessibility Act and Recycling and Composting Accountability Act that FPA has supported in the past.
“We will keep deploying the FlexPAC® to support our other federal priorities,” Richard says.
Richard and Felton say they have grown accustomed to expecting the unexpected, whether it is unexpected nuances to EPR or other state policies or shifts in legislative and regulatory proposals at the federal level. New efforts—and shifting details on older efforts—will be important to track, they say. For example, the Make America Healthy Again initiative by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has included discussions about restricting certain chemicals used in packaging.
“That was one that threw us for a loop,” Richard says.
But FPA has been on it, he and Felton say.
Thomas A. Barstow is senior editor of FlexPack VOICE®.