House recycling bills would bar states from stricter labeling rules

Mass balance bill would bypass FTC’s Green Guides review

Two bipartisan House bills cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee in September and could face a full House vote after the midterm elections. The measures would establish national standards for recycling and recycled-content labels while prohibiting states from imposing stricter requirements — a structure that would neutralize California’s “truth in labeling” law, which bans the chasing-arrows symbol on plastic products that contain toxic chemicals or that cannot realistically be recycled.

The legislation is championed by oil, chemical and packaging companies that spend millions of dollars lobbying Congress each year, and it responds to a growing threat to the industry: several states have proposed or passed laws requiring manufacturers to more honestly acknowledge the challenges of recycling plastic, measures that could force companies to spend money changing their packaging or labels. The bills carry bipartisan sponsorship — the measure endorsing mass balance accounting has 13 House co-sponsors, five of them Democrats including three from Texas, while the other has 19 co-sponsors including one Democrat.

The Recycled Materials Attribution Act, introduced by Rep. Nick Langworthy, a New York Republican, would require the Federal Trade Commission to edit the Green Guides — advertising guidelines designed to prevent greenwashing — so that mass balance is recognized as “an acceptable method for substantiating recycled content claims.” The bill would bypass the FTC’s own revision process, which has collected more than 1,000 public comments including on whether limits should be placed on mass balance, and it would bar states from adopting stricter laws on the practice. A few weeks ago, Sen. John Curtis, a Utah Republican, introduced the mass balance bill in the Senate, where it has no co-sponsors.

Under mass balance, companies can claim a product contains recycled content even when virtually none of its material came from reprocessed plastic. A ProPublica investigation two years ago exposed the “misleading, mathematical sleight of hand” used in that type of accounting, which the Biden administration subsequently prohibited for specific products. The practice lets manufacturers inflate the reported recycledness, or “circularity,” of more lucrative products like plastic while reducing the advertised recycled content of less valuable ones.

Rachel Fullmer, a staff attorney on toxics and environmental health at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in an email that the bills “are peak greenwashing” and “champion deceptive, anti-consumer policies which would result in an increase in plastic production and plastic waste incineration, all while hiding behind the false brand of ‘recycling.’”

The Consumer Brands Association, which represents packaged-goods companies including Amazon, PepsiCo and Land O’Lakes, wrote to the leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in July that the proposals “work in tandem to reduce consumer confusion and plastic waste while providing much-needed clarity to support new domestic innovations and investments,” and that they “demonstrate that consumer protection and recycling-focused efforts go hand-in-hand with promoting affordability and manufacturing investments.” The association spent $2.4 million in the first half of 2026 lobbying on the bills and other issues, according to data from OpenSecrets.

The industry’s case rests in part on chemical recycling, a set of costly, often polluting technologies that break plastic into its molecular building blocks. Theoretically, these processes could take the most stubborn, unrecyclable plastics, like grocery store bags or string cheese wrappers, and rebuild them into new products. That rarely happens. ExxonMobil’s plant in Baytown, Texas, uses oil refinery equipment to heat plastic and transform it into different chemical compounds. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin visited the plant last year and later appeared in a promotional video calling it a “proof of concept” for chemical recycling that could inspire “this entire country.”

The California attorney general’s office, which sued ExxonMobil in 2024 over “deceptively” promoting chemical recycling as an environmental solution, says only 8% of the plastic waste the company processes becomes new plastic; the other 92% mostly becomes fuel that is burned rather than made into plastic products. Citing internal company records, the lawsuit says the recycled plastic is so heavily diluted with new plastic that the resulting products contain less than 0.1% recycled content. ExxonMobil has marketed its chemically recycled products as containing “30% ISCC PLUS certified-circular” content, a technical term that could easily be misinterpreted as meaning 30% recycled material. That label is possible through a specific type of mass balance, which allows a company to claim credit in a new plastic product for the recycled molecules going into other things made in the chemical recycling process. The company said in a court filing that while California may not believe its recycling technologies are sufficient to solve the plastic waste crisis, “ExxonMobil did not assume liability for global pollution by innovating solutions to the problem.”

The second measure, the Packaging and Claims Knowledge Act, introduced by Rep. Randy Weber, a Texas Republican, would regulate which items can be marketed as recyclable, compostable or reusable. Packaging could carry the chasing-arrows symbol only if at least 60% of consumers have access to recycling programs that accept the product, and the item must be technically recyclable — meaning it “can be” reprocessed into a new product — with no requirement to show that reprocessing is economically feasible. Recycling programs sometimes accept plastic products even when there’s no affordable way to ship them to a factory that will make them into something new; as a result, plastic that’s been collected for recycling ends up in a landfill or incinerator. Products not meeting the 60% criteria must include qualifying language, such as “check locally” to see if the product is accepted for recycling.

When Weber introduced the bill last December, his press release said: “Packaging and labeling standards in the United States are increasingly influenced by state-level regulations, particularly those adopted in California.” “The PACK Act cuts through that confusion,” Weber said. “It’s pro-environment, pro-business, and rooted in common sense.” California’s recent law, which the bill targets, requires that 60% of Californians have access to facilities that routinely collect, sort and sell products for reprocessing, and it disqualifies products that have inks or labels preventing recycling or that contain certain levels of heavy metals and the “forever chemicals” known as PFAS, some of which are carcinogenic.

The bill provides little detail about who will make the decisions on which products qualify or what data will be used, but it assigns at least some authority to unspecified “accredited third-party certification” groups — nominally independent organizations that provide sustainability labels for various companies — that would certify every product’s recyclability claim. Kate O’Neill, an environmental science professor at the University of California-Berkeley who specializes in the politics of recycling, said such groups “are supposed to be independent, but they’re easily captured by industry interests.” One example, How2Recycle, sells recycling labels to companies — instructing them, for instance, to “empty and replace cap” before recycling a particular kind of bottle; its parent organization, the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, counts Google, Chobani, 3M, Clorox and Lego among its members, along with the EPA and the United States Postal Service. Several years ago, How2Recycle claimed that No. 5 plastics, used in yogurt tubs, were widely accepted for recycling. Neither How2Recycle nor the coalition returned requests for comment.

The Recycling Leadership Council, an industry consortium supporting Langworthy’s bill, quoted Langworthy in its February press release, touting the legislation as modernizing recycling guidelines “with a uniform national standard that protects consumers from misleading claims while giving American manufacturers the certainty they need to invest, innovate, and compete.” The council spent $120,000 in the first half of this year lobbying for the measure and related issues including “advanced recycling,” the industry’s preferred term for chemical recycling. Spokesperson John Hewitt, who also represents the Consumer Brands Association, said “advanced recycling technologies offer an important opportunity to keep more plastic waste out of landfills,” citing a report from a center-left think tank that concluded investing in chemical recycling could more than double the U.S. plastic recycling rate. Hewitt defended mass balance as “an established method for tracking recycled materials through complex manufacturing processes, allowing companies to incorporate more recycled content into products.” Chemical recycling has struggled to operate at scale, and passage of the mass balance bill could help ExxonMobil and other companies grow that business, as consumers are willing to pay a premium for sustainable products. ExxonMobil spent more than $5 million in the first half of 2026 lobbying on the mass balance bill and many other energy or environmental issues; the company did not return requests for comment.

Langworthy’s campaign committee received $157,000 from the energy sector in the 2026 election cycle, including oil and gas producers and chemical companies; Weber’s committee received $206,000 from the energy sector and chemical companies. Neither lawmaker responded to requests for comment. Ameripen, a packaging trade group, spent $160,000 from January to June 2026 lobbying for the legislation and other environmental issues. Its president, Lynn Dyer, said “AMERIPEN recognized early that differing state rules could make it harder for businesses to explain how consumers should handle packaging after use,” and that the group brought together a coalition and “helped make the case to Congress,” resulting in Weber’s bill. In July, Ameripen urged manufacturers, retailers and brands to tell their members of Congress to back the bill.

ProPublica reached out to every co-sponsor of the House bills. Rep. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter, a Georgia Republican who supports the PACK Act, was the only lawmaker who responded. “American consumers deserve clear, consistent, and reliable information about the products they purchase, and our manufacturers deserve a predictable set of rules to follow,” Carter said in a statement. “The PACK Act is about establishing a uniform national standard that eliminates confusion, supports American manufacturing, and provides greater certainty for businesses and consumers alike. We can promote responsible recycling practices without forcing American businesses to navigate a patchwork of conflicting state regulations.”

The co-sponsors of the Packaging and Claims Knowledge (PACK) Act are:

• Rep. Troy Balderson, Republican of Ohio
• Rep. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter, Republican of Georgia
• Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Republican of Texas
• Rep. Neal Dunn, Republican of Florida
• Rep. Randy Feenstra, Republican of Iowa
• Rep. Russ Fulcher, Republican of Idaho
• Rep. Adam Gray, Democrat of California
• Rep. Glenn Grothman, Republican of Wisconsin
• Rep. David Joyce, Republican of Ohio
• Rep. John Joyce, Republican of Pennsylvania
• Rep. Nick Langworthy, Republican of New York
• Rep. Laurel M. Lee, Republican of Florida
• Rep. Addison McDowell, Republican of North Carolina
• Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Republican of Iowa
• Rep. Barry Moore, Republican of Alabama
• Rep. Michael Rulli, Republican of Ohio
• Rep. Bryan Steil, Republican of Wisconsin
• Rep. Glenn Thompson, Republican of Pennsylvania
• Rep. Tony Wied, Republican of Wisconsin

The co-sponsors of the Recycled Materials Attribution Act are:

• Rep. Troy Balderson, Republican of Ohio
• Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Republican of Texas
• Rep. Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas
• Rep. Donald Davis, Democrat of North Carolina
• Rep. Gabe Evans, Republican of Colorado
• Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, Democrat of Texas
• Rep. Jeff Hurd, Republican of Colorado
• Rep. Jonathan Jackson, Democrat of Illinois
• Rep. Michael Lawler, Republican of New York
• Rep. Addison McDowell, Republican of North Carolina
• Rep. August Pfluger, Republican of Texas
• Rep. Marc Veasey, Democrat of Texas
• Rep. Randy Weber, Republican of Texas

The legislative push comes as federal data show how little of the country’s plastic is reprocessed. Consumers have long been confused by the chasing-arrows symbol on many plastic containers. The label was created in 1970 to encourage paper recycling, and the plastics industry began placing it on products in the 1980s to quell public outrage over plastic pollution. The plastics industry spent decades convincing consumers that throwing used products stamped with the symbol into a curbside bin meant they would be recycled. The symbol gave plastic the sheen of recyclability, even though most items cannot be reprocessed due to economic or technical barriers. The Environmental Protection Agency estimated that 8.7% of U.S. plastic waste was recycled in 2018; the rest ended up in landfills or was incinerated. In 2019, the Department of Energy estimated the national recycling rate at 5%.

California’s law is under a preliminary injunction from a lawsuit filed by food producers and packaging companies, though consumers can still bring private lawsuits if they suspect companies of falsely using the recycling symbol, Dyer said. Experts say the best solution to the plastics crisis wreaking havoc on human health and the environment is to make and use less of the material, with recycling a marginal solution at best.