End Deceptive Recycled Content Claims in California

When a consumer picks up a product labeled "made with recycled content," they reasonably expect that recycled material is actually in their hands. But for a growing number of products, that assumption is wrong — and AB 2253, authored by Assemblymember Boerner, is designed to fix that.

Some plastics and consumer product companies have turned to recycled content "credit" schemes — systems like mass balance free allocation and book-and-claim — to advertise recycled content without physically using any in their products. Under these arrangements, a company can purchase credits generated elsewhere, often from out-of-state or out-of-country sources, and use them to justify recycled content marketing claims on products that contain none. It's accounting on paper, not recycling in practice — and it's misleading consumers at scale.

Beyond consumer protection, these schemes carry a deeper systemic cost. When companies can satisfy recycled content claims by purchasing cheap foreign credits, they have no incentive to invest in California's actual recycling infrastructure — undercutting the businesses and systems the state has worked hard to build.

AB 2253 closes this loophole by requiring that recycled content claims reflect physical material in the product, backed by documentation proving it was diverted from the waste stream. It aligns California with FTC standards, defines postconsumer content accurately, and ensures that "recycled" means what people think it means.