The US House Energy and Commerce Committee has advanced two significant pieces of recycling legislation to the House floor: the Recycled Materials Attribution Act and the Packaging and Claims Knowledge (PACK) Act. The former supports the mass balance accounting method for chemical recycling, while the latter aims to establish a federal clearinghouse to standardise packaging and recycling claims.
These bills represent a major step towards federalising recycling standards in the United States, a market that has historically suffered from fragmented state-level regulations. By formalising mass balance attribution, the US is aligning closer to industry demands for chemical recycling recognition. Meanwhile, the PACK Act targets greenwashing by creating a transparent registry of packaging materials, helping businesses and consumers verify environmental claims.
For UK packaging converters and Turkish recyclers, these US legislative movements are highly significant. Many Turkish recyclers export post-consumer resin (PCR) to multinational consumer goods companies operating across both European and North American markets. Standardisation of mass balance accounting and packaging claims in the US will inevitably influence global procurement policies. If the US formalises these rules, global brands will demand identical compliance and reporting standards from their UK and Turkish suppliers to streamline their international packaging portfolios.
As a practical takeaway, UK and Turkish operators should audit their current material traceability systems. Ensuring that recycled content claims—whether mechanical or chemical—are backed by robust, third-party certified mass balance data will be critical for maintaining access to multinational supply chains as international standards harmonise.
