Retailers Brace for Cost Hikes as Oregon Packaging Law Sparks 1,000-Hour Compliance Ordeal

For retailers, the backroom battles of wholesalers in Oregon’s courtroom are more than legal theater—they are a preview of coming margin pressure. When distributors like R.J. Schinner Co. spend 1,000 hours on packaging reporting, those expenses inevitably trickle downstream. The testimony on fee unpredictability means retailers may face sudden wholesale price shifts that are impossible to anticipate or hedge.

The bench trial of National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (NAW) v. Feldon is shaping up as a landmark test of state authority to impose Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) obligations that ripple outward across interstate supply chains. On days two and three (July 14–15, 2026), NAW–representing wholesalers and distributors–marshaled factual and expert testimony before the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, drilling into the practical burdens of Oregon’s Plastic Pollution and Recycling Modernization Act (RMA). The testimony painted a picture of onerous compliance workloads, opaque fee structures, and supply chain distortions that reach far beyond Oregon’s borders–potentially running afoul of the dormant Commerce Clause.

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James Winkle of Harbor Wholesale Foods echoed these challenges, describing Harbor’s struggle to even understand the RMA’s scope.

The proceedings shifted from the first day’s overview of the RMA’s statutory architecture into a granular examination of how the law functions in the real world. Cory Rodriguez of R.J. Schinner Co. set the tone by quantifying the compliance burden: his company invested roughly 1,000 hours to develop systems for Oregon’s reporting requirements alone–a staggering one-time investment that, even if it diminishes over time, reflects the law’s immediate shock to mid-market distributors. The cost of tracing multiple packaging layers, assigning material-specific fee rates, and reconciling data across complex distribution networks was presented as a symptom of a program that forces businesses to reconfigure their operations for a single state.

James Winkle of Harbor Wholesale Foods echoed these challenges, describing Harbor’s struggle to even understand the RMA’s scope. His testimony, along with Rodriguez’s, gave the court a boots-on-the-ground view of how compliance clogs established logistics workflows and creates risk of sudden fee changes that cannot be retroactively passed to consumers. That inability to recoup costs is a critical economic vulnerability, and NAW used it to highlight the structural unpredictability that distinguishes Oregon’s program from more stable regulatory frameworks.

The most consequential testimony came from Dr. Douglas Thomas, a business administration scholar at the University of Virginia’s Darden School. Thomas articulated the networked nature of modern supply chains, emphasizing that they are optimized across regional and national footprints, not carved up state by state. Oregon-specific obligations–from labeling to fee calculations–inject friction into that optimization, potentially influencing inventory placement, warehouse siting, supplier selection, and pricing strategies in neighboring states. His academic perspective lent intellectual heft to the argument that the RMA, however well-intentioned, exerts extraterritorial pressure in violation of constitutional limits on state regulation of interstate commerce.

On cross-examination, Oregon’s legal team sought to contain the narrative, suggesting that many of the described hardships were birth pains of a novel program rather than design flaws. The state highlighted that Circular Action Alliance Oregon (CAA Oregon), the producer responsibility organization tasked with implementing the program, has already incorporated flexibility to ease the transition. Oregon also challenged the specificity of certain economic testimony, noting that it addressed general business concerns rather than EPR-specific mechanics. Nevertheless, the volume and consistency of the NAW witnesses made it difficult to dismiss the cumulative weight of the evidence.

For the wholesale-distribution sector, the trial’s outcome could redefine how they plan for state-level environmental mandates. A ruling in NAW’s favor might require Oregon to restructure the RMA to minimize interstate burdens, potentially limiting the state’s ability to impose detailed packaging fees. Conversely, a ruling upholding the law would greenlight similar aggressive EPR programs in other states, forcing national distributors to navigate a patchwork of compliance regimes–a prospect that could accelerate calls for federal standardization.