With California's Aug. 1 Individual Source Reduction Plan deadline approaching under SB 54, The Packer sat down with Alyssa Dizon, head of product at rePurpose Global, to unpack how consumer brands — and produce brands in particular — should be thinking about the state's packaging reduction requirements. Dizon covers why "reduce plastic" is a menu of five approved pathways rather than a single mandate, and how brands can right-size or swap materials on packaging that's doing real food-safety work instead of defaulting to elimination.
The conversation also digs into where compliance fees quietly go up: rePurpose recently helped Tillamook save $100,000 in Oregon EPR fees through material reclassification alone, and Dizon explains how the same naming and component-count issues show up across produce's private-label, co-packed, and branded packaging. She addresses how narrow the federal preemption exemption really is for food-safety-driven packaging, how mid-sized operations can build a workable data-collection approach around destination rather than origin, and lays out the minimum five components a produce brand needs in its Aug. 1 submission to stay protected while R&D continues.
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