SB 54’s Internal Fight, and What Taiwan’s Packaging Sector Needs to Learn

California SB 54’s internal fight is a warning for Taiwan’s supply chain: EPR has moved beyond a legal issue for U.S. brands and become a procurement issue that affects materials, printing, proofing, and shipping documents. When MINDS Printing reviews North American packaging projects like this, it first checks three things: material declarations, recycled content ratios, and recyclable design

EPR, Extended Producer Responsibility, is a system that shifts recycling, treatment, and post-use packaging costs away from local waste collection and back to brands and producers. Packaging design has to account for end-of-life costs from the start

In Packaging Insights’ July 20, 2026 report, California Agriculture Alliance Calls for SB 54 Repeal, the publication noted that Californians for Affordable Packaging, CAP, is calling for California SB 54, the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act, to be withdrawn. Its reasons include excessive costs and compliance burden, recycling infrastructure that has not caught up, and the risk that agricultural packaging may be squeezed by the same rule set

SB 54 sets a hard direction: a 25% reduction in packaging waste, a 65% recycling rate for single-use plastic packaging and foodservice ware, and a shift toward single-use packaging and foodservice waste that is recyclable or compostable

Simple as that

From a print shop’s point of view, this is not just legal text for the legal department. For the same bag or the same box, ink, film layers, barrier coating, label adhesive, and recycled content can all change the customer’s declaration results

CAP specifically named dairy cartons, jugs, clamshell packs, corrugated boxes, plastic films, bags, wraps, and glass containers as potentially affected. The scope cuts across paper, plastic, glass, and corrugated board. This is already far beyond the small world of plastic film

The anxiety on the agriculture side centers on several on-site realities

・Packaging has to block contamination. The Packaging Insights report mentioned that CalRecycle has exemption paths for some packaging subject to FDA and USDA food safety requirements

・Some oxygen or moisture-control layers exist for shelf-life. They cannot be judged only by standard recycling categories

・Small parts like seals, liners, and caps do not stand out, but in practice they often decide whether a box of agricultural products can be shipped safely

CalRecycle’s exemption logic also gives Taiwan’s supply chain a reminder: if a brand wants to argue that a packaging component is necessary for food safety or preservation, it needs proof that there is no reasonable alternative. “The customer specified it” is not enough

For Taiwan’s supply chain, this fight is useful because it lays out early the questions buyers will ask later

・Which substrates does your packaging use?

・Does it contain recycled content?

・Can you explain why alternative materials are not feasible?

・Which design file version matches which BOM version?

The source material has already listed states such as CA, OR, ME, WA, and CO. Taiwanese brands are facing a patchwork of state laws. A California-only specification cannot be used as a blanket answer for the entire U.S

The same Packaging Insights report also noted that a related New York bill failed to pass for the third year in June, Oregon’s EPR implementation has been hit with a preliminary injunction, and yet about one-fifth of U.S. residents already live in EPR states

My view is clear: if the supply chain bets in the wrong direction, it ends up hoping regulations get delayed. The more practical move is to assume customer procurement forms will be revised ahead of schedule

The most common problem I see on packaging proofing tables is not that something cannot be printed. It is that the material sheet, film thickness, ink, labeling, and outer carton are split across five files, and no one can say which version is the final shipping version

Do one thing first

Tie the material, film thickness, ink, adhesive layer, outer carton, and label for one SKU into a single traceable data set. If a North American customer already requires material sheets and small-batch samples to be updated together, MINDS Printing can help place proofing, color control, and specification documents at the same print submission point, cutting down a few rounds of back-and-forth email

I would use the “MINDS Printing, MS, mid- to high-end fully custom commercial printing, three print submission gates” to review North American packaging projects

・① Declarable materials: each SKU should at least keep six fields, substrate, film layer, ink, adhesive, label, and outer carton, so the responsibility boundary can still be found when the customer revises the design

・② Recyclable design: beyond color and shelf impact, design files also need to confirm whether the label, lamination, or barrier layer will make the recycling stream harder to handle

・③ Traceable revisions: for the same packaging material, v:

・1, v

・2, v3 need to keep the reason for each revision, so future questions about EPR fees or exemptions do not turn into inbox archaeology

For designers, the habit that most needs to change is treating a sustainability claim as just layout copy

Before, when a customer asked for something eco-friendly, you might have swapped in a recycle icon or added a sustainability claim. After SB 54, graphic claims need to match material evidence, especially words like all recyclable, compostable, and PCR

I would rather cut a pretty slogan before artwork release than patch together an unclear explanation after shipment

・The SB 54 dispute comes down to how to calculate the 25% reduction target, 65% recycling rate, and exemptions for food safety packaging

・EPR will change procurement forms first, then design files, and finally print shops’ BOMs and version control

・The first three lessons Taiwan’s supply chain needs to catch up on are material declarations, recycled content ratios, and recyclable design

・For export packaging, recyclable design without documents will soon become attractive artwork with no procurement value

Extending this into print manufacturing, design, AI adoption, and SaaS, I would start with one small task: turn packaging specifications into a database, so one SKU can be traced to its substrate, ink, film layer, version, applicable customer states, and declaration documents. AI can help compare revision differences, organize customer questionnaires, and flag missing fields. SaaS handles permissions, version control, and approvals. If your team is sorting out North American EPR packaging workflows, you can ask the MINDS Knowledge Academy consulting team to align material sheets, print submission files, and procurement questionnaires first. Do not let a regulatory issue end up as a rush artwork revision

・Packaging Insights: California Agriculture Alliance Calls for SB 54 Repeal