AB 2253 (Boerner) Deceptive Recycled Content Claims
OVERVIEW
AB 2253 protects consumers from deceptive recycled content claims by prohibiting companies from using misleading recycled content “credit” schemes and other accounting gimmicks to advertise recycled content when none is physically present in the product.
BACKGROUND
For decades, California has relied on recycled content as a cornerstone of its recycling and waste-reduction strategy. Incorporating recycled materials into products such as plastic bottles, packaging, paper, and glass creates stable demand for materials collected through recycling programs. That demand helps keep materials out of landfills, reduces the need for virgin resource extraction, and supports recycling infrastructure and jobs.
In recent years, however, some plastics and consumer product companies have increasingly turned to recycled content “credit” schemes or accounting gimmicks rather than using actual recycled material in their products. Under these systems (often referred to as “mass balance,” “free allocation,” or “book-and-claim accounting”) companies can purchase credits associated with debatably recycled material from elsewhere in the global supply chain or use convoluted accounting methods that generate credits untethered from recycled material.
California’s Attorney General’s Office filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil in 2024 to protect Californians from these deceptive claims, saying the recycled content “scheme employed by ExxonMobil is actually a false and misleading marketing scheme, which ExxonMobil uses to mislead the public into believing that products made with “certified circular polymers” have significant environmental benefits or are made of plastic waste”. Similarly, under the Biden Administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Safe Choice standard updated their standards to require recycled content be determined “by weight,” effectively forbidding these deceptive accounting schemes.
Consumers should be able to trust the labels they see on store shelves. When companies use credit schemes and accounting gimmicks to inflate recycled content claims without actually increasing the amount of recycled material in their products, it undermines that trust and misleads the public.
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Position: Sponsored by Californians Against Waste
Contact: Kayla Robinson
Fact Sheet: Here
Status: Passed Assembly Natural Resources
Current language, analysis, and votes: AB 2253
EXISTING LAW
Existing law requires manufacturers and suppliers that make recycled content claims about plastic food containers to keep written documentation proving the recycled material was diverted from the waste stream and that the claim complies with Federal Trade Commission standards, and to make that documentation available to the public upon request or online.
WHAT DOES AB 2253 DO?
AB 2253 extends the existing recycled content claim requirements to all products, ensuring that all product categories are held accountable for truthful recycled content claims.
This bill also clarifies that recycled content claims reflect the physical recycled material in a product, prohibiting credit-based accounting or book-and-claim systems, and establishes that postconsumer recycled content only includes materials recovered after consumer use, not manufacturing scraps or byproducts reused in production.