New Jersey Senate Passes Bill to Adjust Shipping Box Sizes

This sound is generated automatically. Let us know if you have feedback.

Brief description of the dive:

The New Jersey Senate has passed a bill that would prohibit large online retailers and major retailers in the state from shipping products to consumers in cardboard or corrugated boxes that are more than twice the volume of the product being shipped. S226 passed in a 21-15 vote Friday.
The bill, sponsored by Democrats Bob Smith and John McKeon in the Senate and Clinton Calabrese and Annette Quijano in the Assembly, was sent to the Assembly and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Economic Development and Agriculture. New Jersey’s two-year legislative session runs through Jan. 13, 2026.
It is one of a group of bills related to packaging and plastics that are still in play in New Jersey, including an extended producer responsibility bill for packaging. Several bills related to recyclability, plastic reduction and toxicity reduction have been filed out of committee.

Diving Insight:

New Jersey has a history of mandating changes to packaging. This year, a New Jersey law signed in 2022 went into effect that bans polystyrene fillers and requires varying levels of recycled content in different packaging materials.

Like the packaging filler regulations, S226 is a “sensible measure” to reduce packaging waste, Doug O’Malley, state director of Environment New Jersey, told Packaging Dive.

This session, “there are a number of bills on the Senate desk that address plastics and waste reduction. I think it’s really significant that this bill is the first one that’s been heard in the full Senate and passed. And I think that just speaks to the fact that this is a pretty common experience and it’s resonating with the public in some way,” said O’Malley, who hopes the Assembly will take it up in the fall.

But the New Jersey Business & Industry Association said the rules amount to an attempt to “micromanage sophisticated logistics organizations.” The organization predicts that shipping costs will increase for New Jersey consumers and that next-day delivery service could be in jeopardy. “Our policymakers should not be deciding the best way to ship without their own expertise,” Ray Cantor, deputy director of government affairs at the NJBIA, said in an emailed statement to Packaging Dive.

Some of the largest online retailers say they are already making changes across their businesses to adjust packaging sizes.

Walmart announced in June 2023 that it was deploying technology across half of its fulfillment network to enable customization of packaging to fit orders. It said the change could reduce filler requirements by 60% and cut waste by up to 26%. Amazon has touted its use of machine learning to support the deployment of optimized, lighter, and right-sized packaging. Third-party hardware vendors are also eager to serve this niche.

The size adjustment bill was previously introduced in 2022. This session’s version was included in On May 13, a meeting of the Senate Committee on Environment and Energy was held. The amended bill included some exceptions for consumer electronics products. It also added a provision requiring compliance with any minimum size requirements set by the U.S. Postal Service or a private shipping company, where applicable. The Department of Environmental Protection and other agencies could issue fines to violators.

Are you interested in packaging news? Sign up for the Packaging Dive newsletter today.