Year in review: PIRG’s 2025 highlights

DENVER – In 2025, PIRG and our members and supporters helped pass laws and built public support for commonsense solutions to make the United States safer and less wasteful.

“Amid the partisan noise of national politics, it’s easy to forget that most Americans share a common desire for a marketplace that’s fair and honest,” said PIRG President Faye Park. “Whether it’s getting toxics out of food or the right to repair, it’s heartening to see bipartisan support among the public and at the state level for solutions that help us live healthier, more sustainable lives.”

Consumer protection: toys, robocalls and AI-fueled scams

In November, U.S. PIRG Education Fund released its Trouble in Toyland report, which earned widespread attention, especially for exposing the oft-hidden risks of toys that feature artificial intelligence (AI). This type of problem seemed like dystopian science fiction 40 years ago, when PIRG consumer advocates in Oregon began the Toyland series.

In the course of testing by PIRG researchers, an AI teddy bear called Kumma discussed explicit sexual issues, where to locate knives in a house, and where to find and how to light matches. This led FoloToy, the company that made Kumma, to withdraw it from the market. FoloToy resumed selling the bear soon afterward, but only after implementing new safeguards against inappropriate conversations with children.

With AI making text and phone scams more common and more difficult to spot, PIRG tracked the emergence of AI-fueled scams and continued to highlight the problem of robocalls with our annual Ringing in our Fears report, which found robocalls hitting a six-year high.

In December, The Washington Post broke the story that PIRG staff had found a flaw in credit bureau TransUnion’s security protections that allowed impostors to potentially take over customers’ private records. In response to our work, TransUnion fixed the flaw.

Raising awareness of toxic threats

From glyphosate and other pesticides to PFAS (aka “forever chemicals”), this year, PIRG worked with people across the political spectrum to raise awareness of toxic threats. In Oregon, OSPIRG helped pass a bill banning PFAS in firefighting foam, and we’re working to do the same in more states.

Our staff also created guides for parents to use every day to pack school lunches without toxic dyes and to find dye-free cereals.

In the final months of 2025, PIRG called on lawmakers to uphold existing pesticide protections. We’re also working with a broad coalition to “say no to glyphosate,” the highly toxic pesticide best known for years as the active ingredient in Roundup. And we’re calling for action to keep PFAS out of drinking water, in part by reducing the use of PFAS in consumer products.

Right to repair for wheelchair users, the military and more

In 2025, PIRG’s Right to Repair team kept chipping away at the throwaway mentality that assumes it’s better to replace a product with something new than to repair something you already own.

As our national network wins more Right to Repair laws (in eight states so far, and counting) for consumer electronics, more manufacturers have made products ranging from laptops to refrigerators easier to fix, with more accessible manuals and easy-to-find parts and tools.

PIRG’s state advocacy has also propelled the passage of wheelchair repair laws in four states. We pushed for national action by urging Congress to pass the Wheelchair Right to Repair Act and called on lawmakers to support the Warrior Right to Repair Act, which would ensure timely, cost-effective repairs of the equipment our armed services rely on.

Moving America beyond plastic

In May, U.S. PIRG Education Fund shone a light on plastic waste by helping spearhead the first-annual International Pellet Count. Volunteers from across the country searched for plastic pellets, or “nurdles,” which are the feedstock for everyday plastic products. It’s estimated that trillions of microplastic particles from these pellets enter our oceans each year. This citizen science effort provided crucial insights about where nurdles are entering — or are being dumped — into our environment.

PIRG also published resources on both the prevalence of microplastics in our food supply and their potential impacts on human health. And because changing the corporate practices of some of America’s largest companies could help put our country on a path beyond single-use plastic, we urged General Mills, Trader Joe’s, Costco and other companies to reduce their reliance on single-use plastic packaging.

Advocating for health care price transparency and integrity

With medical bills shockingly high and hospitals charging wildly different prices for the same service, PIRG led campaigns to help bring down the high cost of health care.

We urged lawmakers to support the Patients Deserve Price Tags Act, which enjoys broad bipartisan support and would require hospitals and providers to provide clear, upfront prices for services. And we also pushed legislators to ban senseless hospital facility fees that charge patients even though they might not have stepped foot in a hospital.

PIRG: advocating for consumers, advancing solutions

For five decades, PIRG has advocated for consumers and advanced solutions to problems that affect Americans’ health, safety and well-being. As we celebrate what we’ve achieved in 2025, we look forward to making more progress in 2026 and working with anyone – Republican, Democrat or independent – when we find common ground on an issue.