State victories in 2025: rooftop solar, wildlife crossings, high value health care and more

I’m glad to share with you a roundup of legislative victories so far this year from the state organizations of The Public Interest Network’s flagship groups, PIRG and Environment America. 

• In Washington, a bill to increase recycling rates and reduce wasteful packaging;
• In Oregon, bills to prioritize more wildlife crossings and prevent medical debt from affecting credit scores;
• In Colorado, a bill to protect wild bison;
• In Texas, a bill making it quicker and easier to install rooftop solar;
• In Virginia, a bill requiring invasive plant species to be labeled in stores. These plants are bad for pollinators, soil and lead to greater use of toxic pesticides; and in
• Washington, Texas and Connecticut bills supporting the Right to Repair, making it easier for people to fix their stuff and reduce e-waste.

State-level victories like these have been a key part of PIRG and Environment America’s impact for fifty years. Our strong presence on the ground in more than 30 states allows us to build long-term relationships with state legislators and partners in the advocacy community, helping to deliver positive, incremental, and consistent progress even in a challenging political environment.

Thanks to our federated structure and close coordination between state groups, we specialize in taking state victories and exporting them to other states, thereby maximizing our impact. For example, the Right To Repair victories mentioned above came after we helped pass similar laws in Minnesota and Colorado, and used that experience to guide our work elsewhere. We’ll keep building that momentum, learning what works and applying it in a strategic fashion, with an aim of making Right To Repair the law of the land.

In this moment, we’re taking great care to choose issues and solutions that Americans in every state — blue, red or purple — can get behind. Rather than urging states like California and Massachusetts to vault so far forward that it becomes tougher to bring the rest of the country along, we’re keeping in mind where the public in other states are at, appealing to shared values that cross state lines, and recruiting politically diverse voices to join our calls for change even in the bluest states. One example of this approach leading to promising results is our work to build more wildlife crossings, which has attracted bipartisan support for early action in Oregon, supporting the creation of more crossing and corridors, and in Pennsylvania, for a study bill that led to an $840,000 federal award to craft a statewide wildlife crossings plan.

The efforts of PIRG and Environment America’s state groups don’t end at the adoption of new laws. As we welcome positive policy change, we work to ensure its wise implementation. Last month, for instance, Environment Oregon & OSPIRG celebrated The Recycling Modernization Act taking effect after years of our careful post-passage guidance and watchdogging — which for Oregonians now means expanded recycling access in rural areas, an easier time determining if they’re recycling the right things, manufacturers of packaging and paper products sharing more of the cost of waste management, and more.

Thank you to governors and state legislators from both parties who have acted to protect the environment and our well-being.