Two bipartisan House bills would establish national recycling and recycled content labeling standards while prohibiting states from imposing stricter requirements, according to ProPublica's investigation. The legislation, championed by oil, chemical, and packaging companies, would neutralize state laws like California's "truth in labeling" law that bans the chasing arrows symbol on plastic products containing toxic chemicals or that cannot realistically be recycled.
One bill, the Recycled Materials Attribution Act introduced by Rep. Nick Langworthy, a New York Republican, would require the Federal Trade Commission to recognize "mass balance" accounting as an acceptable method for substantiating recycled content claims. Mass balance allows companies to claim a product contains recycled content when virtually none actually came from reprocessed plastic. The Biden administration previously prohibited this practice for specific products after a ProPublica investigation exposed it.
The Consumer Brands Association, representing packaged goods companies including Amazon, PepsiCo, and Land O'Lakes, praised the bills. The association spent $2.4 million in the first half of 2026 lobbying on these bills and other issues, according to OpenSecrets data. In September, both bills cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The mass balance bill has 13 co-sponsors, including five Democrats, while the other has 19 co-sponsors, including one Democrat. Sen. John Curtis, a Utah Republican, introduced the mass balance bill in the Senate with no additional co-sponsors.
Rachel Fullmer, a staff attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the bills "peak greenwashing" that would result in increased plastic production and plastic waste incineration while hiding behind false recycling claims.
The chasing arrows symbol, created in 1970 to encourage paper recycling, was placed on plastic products beginning in the 1980s to address public concerns about plastic pollution. The Environmental Protection Agency estimated that 8.7% of U.S. plastic waste was recycled in 2018, with the remainder ending up in landfills or incinerated.
The bills address ExxonMobil's chemical recycling facility in Baytown, Texas. The California attorney general's office sued ExxonMobil in 2024, alleging the company deceptively promoted chemical recycling as an environmental solution. According to the lawsuit, only 8% of the plastic waste processed by ExxonMobil becomes new plastic, with 92% becoming fuel that is burned. The lawsuit states that recycled plastic in resulting products contains less than 0.1% recycled content while being marketed as containing "30% ISCC PLUS certified-circular" content.
ExxonMobil responded that it "did not assume liability for global pollution by innovating solutions to the problem."