Today, the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade held a hearing on two bills that would significantly change how recycling claims are regulated in the United States: the PACK Act and the Recycled Materials Attribution Act.
Both bills are being promoted as efforts to create greater consistency and improve consumer confidence. But instead of strengthening recycling, they would weaken the standards that ensure recycling claims are truthful, transparent, and accountable.
The PACK Act Would Weaken Truth in Labeling
The Promoting Accurate and Verifiable Labels (PACK) Act would establish a federal framework for recyclability claims while preventing states from adopting stronger standards.
States have long been at the forefront of protecting consumers from misleading environmental marketing. They have been able to respond as recycling markets evolve, infrastructure changes, and new packaging materials enter the marketplace. The PACK Act would take away that flexibility and replace it with a one-size-fits-all federal approach that could prevent states from raising the bar in the future.
Rather than strengthening consumer protections, the bill risks locking in weaker standards and limiting states’ ability to ensure that products marketed as recyclable can actually be recycled.
The Recycled Materials Attribution Act Would Weaken Recycled Content Claims
The Recycled Materials Attribution Act would authorize an accounting system for recycled content claims that allows recycled content generated through chemical recycling to be assigned to new plastic products—even when the recycled feedstock does not physically become those products.
This would allow recycled content claims to become increasingly disconnected from what actually happens to materials after they are collected. Consumers could be led to believe they are purchasing products made with recycled plastic when the underlying material may have been transformed into fuels or other non-plastic outputs instead.
Recycled content claims should reflect real material content and real recycling outcomes—not accounting approaches that obscure them.
Congress Should Raise the Bar
The United States does not need weaker recycling standards. It needs stronger ones.
Congress should focus on policies that increase transparency, strengthen truth in labeling, and ensure recycled content claims accurately reflect what happens to materials. It should support investments in proven recycling systems, expand domestic manufacturing that uses recycled feedstocks, and preserve states’ ability to lead on consumer protection and environmental policy.
Most importantly, Congress should reinforce a simple principle: if a product is marketed as recyclable or made with recycled content, those claims should be grounded in real-world outcomes that consumers can trust.
Recycling depends on credibility. When labels and recycled content claims become disconnected from reality, public confidence erodes and truly responsible recycling systems are undermined.
AMBR urges Congress to reject the PACK Act and the Recycled Materials Attribution Act and instead pursue policies that strengthen recycling by promoting transparency, accountability, and real material recovery—not weaker standards that make it easier to market disposal as recycling.
For a deeper look at these bills, read our analyses: