Federal Acquisition Regulation: Ending Procurement and Forced Use of Paper Straws

OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET <SUBAGY>Office of Federal Procurement Policy</SUBAGY> DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION <CFR>48 CFR Parts 11, 12, and 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[FAR Case 2025-006, Docket No. FAR-2025-0006, Sequence No. 1]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 9000-AO79</RIN> <SUBJECT>Federal Acquisition Regulation: Ending Procurement and Forced Use of Paper Straws</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP), Office of Management and Budget; Department of Defense (DoD); General Services Administration (GSA); and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> OFPP, DoD, GSA, and NASA, collectively referred to as the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council (FAR Council), are proposing to amend the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to ensure agencies procure straws with the strength and durability of plastic in accordance with the National Strategy to End the Use of Paper Straws. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Interested parties should submit written comments to the Regulatory Secretariat Division at the address shown below on or before September 19, 2025, to be considered in the formation of the final rule. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit comments in response to FAR Case 2025-006 to the Federal eRulemaking portal at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> by searching for “FAR Case 2025-006”. Select the link “Comment Now” that corresponds with “FAR Case 2025-006”. Follow the instructions provided on the “Comment Now” screen. Please include your name, company name (if any), and “FAR Case 2025-006” on your attached document. If your comment cannot be submitted using <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> call or email the points of contact in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section of this document for alternate instructions. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> Please submit comments only and cite “FAR Case 2025-006” in all correspondence related to this case. Comments received generally will be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal and/or business confidential information provided. Public comments may be submitted as an individual, as an organization, or anonymously (see frequently asked questions at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/faq</E> ). To confirm receipt of your comment(s), please check <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> approximately two to three days after submission to verify posting. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For clarification of content, contact FAR Policy at 202-969-4075 or by email at <E T="03">FARPolicy@gsa.gov.</E> For information pertaining to status, publication schedules, or alternate instructions for submitting comments if <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> cannot be used, contact the Regulatory Secretariat Division at 202-501-4755 or <E T="03">GSARegSec@gsa.gov.</E> Please cite “FAR Case 2025-006.” </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> On February 10, 2025, the President issued Executive Order (E.O.) 14208, Ending Procurement and Forced Use of Paper Straws. Section 2(c) of the E.O. directed the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, in coordination with relevant agencies, to issue a National Strategy to End the Use of Paper Straws (“National Strategy”) that addresses contract policies that ban or penalize plastic straw purchase or use. The National Strategy, issued in March 2025, stated that the FAR Council should amend the FAR to ensure that no Federal agency procures paper straws, consistent with the policy in E.O. 14208. As part of these efforts, the FAR should be updated to include a performance requirement that beverage straws procured and used under Federal contracts have the strength and durability of plastic straws and a provision that requires all Government contractors to represent that they do not use paper straws or penalize the use of plastic straws. The FAR Council is proposing to revise the FAR to align with the National Strategy. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Discussion and Analysis</HD> The FAR Council is proposing the following amendments to the FAR to implement the National Strategy: <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Minimum Performance Requirements</HD> The proposed rule, if finalized, would amend FAR subpart 11.3, Acceptable Material, to add a minimum Government performance requirement for straws to be procured by agencies or provided for use in agency facilities under Government contracts. The new policy to be added at FAR 11.301(c)(3) would require such straws to have the strength and durability of plastic straws. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Representation</HD> This proposed rule, if finalized, would also create a new solicitation provision at FAR 52.211-XX, Ending Procurement and Forced Use of Paper Straws, to be included in solicitations for the acquisition of straws or when the resultant contract may require the contractor to provide straws for use at a Federal facility. The new provision requires the offeror to represent that it does not have policies promoting the use of paper straws or penalizing the use of plastic straws, that it will not provide paper straws in performance of the contract, and that any straws provided by the offeror in performance of this contract will have the strength and durability of plastic straws. This provision is proposed to be included in the list of provisions that are applicable to the acquisition of commercial products and commercial services. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Justification</HD> FAR subpart 23.1, Sustainable Products and Services, provides procedures to ensure agencies procure sustainable products and services to the maximum extent practicable, pursuant to certain statutory purchasing preference programs. One such program is the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) BioPreferred Program. It is a statutory purchasing preference program that establishes minimum biobased content standards for certain products, to include paper straws. Established under the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 and implemented through FAR subpart 23.1, the BioPreferred Program promotes the procurement and use of biobased products across the Federal Government and includes paper straws among its designated product categories. Under this program, agencies are generally required to give procurement preference to designated biobased products unless the item is not reasonably available, fails to meet performance standards, or is not cost effective. Per FAR 23.103(a)(1), procuring sustainable products and services is considered practicable unless the sustainable product or service does not meet reasonable performance requirements. When it is not practicable, the contracting officer must obtain a written justification from the requiring activity and include it in the contract file (see FAR 23.104(a)). This proposed rule adds language at FAR 11.301(c)(3) to make clear that paper straws do not meet the Government's reasonable performance requirement, which serves as the written justification required by FAR 23.104(a). <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Applicability to Contracts at or Below the Simplified Acquisition Threshold (SAT) and for Commercial Products (Including Commercially Available Off-the-Shelf (COTS) Items) or for Commercial Services</HD> This rule proposes to add a new solicitation provision at FAR 52.211-XX, Ending Procurement and Forced Use of Paper Straws. The provision would be prescribed at FAR 11.302(b) for use in solicitations for the acquisition of straws or when the resultant contract may require the contractor to provide straws for use at a Federal facility. The provision would be applicable to acquisitions at or below the SAT, acquisitions for commercial products (including COTS items), and acquisitions of commercial services. It is necessary to apply this solicitation provision to these categories of acquisitions, since straws are a COTS item and are most frequently provided in contracts for commercial services and contracts valued at or below the SAT. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Expected Impact of the Rule</HD> The data, findings, and conclusions in this section are directly drawn from the March 2025 “National Strategy To End The Use of Paper Straws,” and the supporting analysis in E.O. 14208. The rule is expected to result in a net benefit. The reduced costs, superior performance, and decreased health and safety risks associated with use of plastic straws or biobased straws with the strength and durability of plastic significantly outweigh any de minimis compliance costs or any potential transitory costs of moving away from ineffective paper straws. The facts of the case are clear and simple: paper straws cost more, are ineffective, carry increased health and safety risks, and unduly burden individuals with disabilities. The Domestic Policy Council (DPC) reached similar conclusions in their report to the President entitled “National Strategy To End The Use of Paper Straws” (March 2025). Paper straws have been forced into cafeterias at contractor and Federal Government facilities, veteran's health facilities, and military installations. Our Nation's veterans, military and their families, Government and contractor employees, and citizens or tourists visiting Government facilities deserve better than to be subjected to these costly, ineffective and hazardous paper straws. Concession contracts, such as those at the National Parks, are usually not issued using the FAR, so they are not covered by this rule. The aggregated number of straws purchased directly or during performance of Government contracts at the locations noted above is not available ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 28k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━