SACRAMENTO, California — A California state Democrat introduced legislation on Thursday to crack down on what she calls misleading recycled content claims — just as Congress starts weighing an industry-backed bill that would move in the opposite direction.
What happened: State Assemblymember Tasha Boerner’s AB 2253, shared first with POLITICO, would require companies making recycled content claims to prove that the recycled material is actually in the product. It would ban the use of accounting workarounds called “mass balance,” where companies can essentially buy credits to call a product recycled without the recycled material ever being used in it.
“Californians are very environmentally aware and sustainable consumers, and what we’re seeing right now is really a bait and switch situation where people are being told that there’s recycled content, and often it’s the case that there isn’t any recycled content in the product, and that’s just bad math,” Boerner said in an interview.
Why this matters: Just last week, a bipartisan group of House members introduced legislation backed by the plastics industry to codify mass balance accounting nationally and effectively preempt states from banning the method. If Congress passes the industry-backed bill first, it could strip states like California of the ability to set their own stricter standards, echoing broader battles between the Trump and Newsom administrations over environmental rules.
