How is “access to recycling” measured, and does the measurement hold?

The number underneath the law

A single measurement concept underwrites much of the labelling law in this library: access to recycling, expressed as the share of a population able to recycle a given package. The FTC’s 60 per cent “substantial majority” test licences unqualified American recyclable claims. California built dual 60 per cent criteria on it. Schemes from How2Recycle to the ARL anchor their labels in it. The concept is treated as a measured constant. This article asks what it measures, how, and whether it supports the propositions statutes build on it.

“Access” is a defined and systematically measured quantity. Its definition is narrower than the propositions built on it. The American dataset with the broadest programme coverage located here states that limitation in the report itself, in terms the statutes citing the data do not reproduce.

What the measurers say it means

The Recycling Partnership’s National Database covers more than 9,000 local programmes. Its State of Recycling report: “Access to recycling means having the ability to easily recycle all your recyclable items both because you have an active and convenient recycling service and your local program accepts all recyclable materials. We define ‘access’ as a household having physical access to a recycling container” (The Recycling Partnership, 2024). On that definition, 73 per cent of American households have access — 85 per cent of single-family homes, 37 per cent of multifamily.

Access is container availability plus programme acceptance: what households could do, not what happens. The same report publishes the rest of the cascade: 43 per cent of households participate; “only 21% of residential recyclables are being recycled,” with 76 per cent of recyclable material lost at the household and 3 per cent at facilities. California records the widest gap in the report: 95 per cent access, 37 per cent capture. Strength grade: strong as measurement — definition published verbatim, national coverage, participation and capture published alongside access. The publisher is a nonprofit funded by industry; that is stated in the report.

Programme acceptance is typically taken from published lists — what programmes say they take — which is not what facilities successfully sort and sell. “60 per cent access” for a package format is a statement about list coverage, not sortation. Because access is measured per household, it is also a housing statistic. The 48-point single-family/multifamily divide gives every access threshold a distributional profile.

Thresholds built on it

The FTC Green Guides permit unqualified recyclable claims “[w]hen recycling facilities are available to a substantial majority of consumers or communities where the item is sold,” defining substantial majority as “at least 60 percent” (16 CFR § 260.12) — collection-side only. California’s SB 343 added sortation: collection in programmes covering at least 60 per cent of the state’s population and sorting into defined streams. Enforcement is currently preliminarily enjoined. The 2026 federal Truth in Labeling Act, as introduced, would require an established programme “for which a responsible end market exists” covering at least 60 per cent, with a qualified-claim tier at 40 per cent (Resource Recycling, 2026). That is the first located federal text conditioning a claim on end-market existence in addition to access.

Canada has no access threshold. The Competition Bureau’s 2025 environmental-claims guidelines set no numeric access test. The regime is substantiation-based. Commentary describing a Canadian 60 per cent analogue describes a test the guidelines do not contain. See the Canada article.

Four facts, one number

Collection access, successful sortation, actual reprocessing and end-market existence are four different facts. Thresholds do not consistently distinguish them. Greenpeace: “being accepted by a recycling processing plant does not necessarily result in them being recycled.” PET and HDPE bottles — the materials with the highest access under the test — achieved reprocessing rates of 20.9 and 10.3 per cent respectively (Greenpeace, 2022). The Association of Plastic Recyclers requires all three downstream conditions: at least 60 per cent access, likely correct sortation “into a market-ready bale,” and cost-effective reprocessing into feedstock for identifiable new products (APR, n.d.). The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s “in practice and at scale” means a 30 per cent post-consumer recycling rate in multiple regions covering at least 400 million inhabitants (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2023) — an outcome standard no American plastic packaging type met on the Greenpeace data.

The same idea, different anchors

OPRL’s unqualified “Recycle” requires collection by 75 per cent or more of UK local authorities, plus effective sortation, reprocessing and sale. “Do Not Recycle” applies below 50 per cent. That is a collection-coverage test with a higher bar than the FTC’s 60 per cent, plus an outcome condition the Green Guides do not write into the 60 per cent number itself. Australian ARL thresholds are scheme rules, not statute. They are not interchangeable with the American legal test.

Where the meter sits

The EU’s 2019 reforms harmonised the calculation point for packaging recycling statistics. Measured “recycling” moved with the meter’s placement. Access statistics can do the same: a high access number can coexist with low capture, as California’s 95 / 37 split shows. Statutes that treat access as recyclability skip the rest of the cascade the Partnership report itself publishes.

What the statistic encodes

Access is measured per household, so it encodes housing type. Multifamily exclusion is large (37 per cent access against 85 per cent for single-family). Any legal threshold built on household access is therefore a threshold with an equity profile. That is taken up in Who is excluded by packaging labels?

Does the measurement hold?

As measurement, access holds: definitions are explicit, the data infrastructure is real, and the leading measurer publishes the caveats. As a proxy for outcome, it fails: access is not participation, capture, sortation or reprocessing. As a legal trigger for an unqualified “recyclable” claim, it supports only the collection-side proposition the Green Guides actually write. The downstream facts require other numbers. The Partnership report already prints them.

References

APR (Association of Plastic Recyclers) (n.d.) APR Design Guide (recyclability definition). Hosted copy available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

Competition Bureau (2025) Competition Bureau issues final guidelines regarding environmental claims, 5 June. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2023) written submission to INC-2 (recyclable in practice and at scale). Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

Eurostat (2022) Plastic packaging waste: 38% recycled in 2020, October. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

Greenpeace USA (2022) Circular Claims Fall Flat Again, press release, 24 October. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

Resource Recycling (2026) Bicameral Truth in Labeling Act introduced in Congress, 10 August. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

The Recycling Partnership (2024) State of Recycling: The Present and Future of Residential Recycling in the U.S., January. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

16 CFR § 260.12 (Recyclable claims). Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

Note on sources and verification

The Recycling Partnership's access definition and cascade figures are quoted verbatim from the retrieved report PDF; the acceptance-list observation reflects the report's described methodology. The § 260.12 language is verbatim from the eCFR. SB 343's dual criteria are summarised from the secondary analysis and statute as documented in the chasing-arrows article; its injunction is covered there. Truth in Labeling Act provisions are as reported in the trade coverage cited; bill numbers were not stated in that coverage and are not asserted — verify against congress.gov before onward citation. The Canadian no-threshold finding is verified against the Bureau's release and legal analyses; it corrects a planning-stage assumption of a Canadian access percentage. Greenpeace, APR and EMF formulations are verbatim from the sources cited; the EMF's population clause is included deliberately, correcting truncated versions in circulation. The Eurostat quotation is verbatim; for packaging the operative instrument is Implementing Decision (EU) 2019/665 — cited here in preference to Decision 2019/1004, which implements the Waste Framework Directive's data rules — a correction to common citation practice. The four-stage chain framing is a synthesis presented in this article.

Last verified: 18 August 2026.