Would a federal law replace the state patchwork?

The PACK Act: substantive standards

H.R. 6832 would prohibit false or misleading representations that packaging is recyclable, compostable or reusable, and would define the conditions on which each claim may be made. The threshold term is “substantial majority”, which the bill defines as 60 per cent or more. An unqualified recyclability claim would generally require recycling access at that level for the relevant population, together with design and processing conditions applied to the package as a whole rather than to its components individually, apart from minor incidental elements. Access below the threshold would require qualification.

The bill also establishes evidence and qualification rules for compostable claims, and requires that a reusable claim correspond to a functioning reuse or refill system rather than to the theoretical durability of the package. Accredited third-party certification would perform a central substantiation role. The proposal distinguishes consumer-facing claims from neutral instructions about how to recycle, a boundary whose application would require interpretation if the bill were enacted.

The bill addresses the resin identification code directly. Packaging ineligible for a compostable, recyclable or reusable claim "shall not bear a resin identification code that is surrounded by three chasing, triangulated arrows, except that such packaging may bear a resin identification code that is surrounded by an equilateral triangle, consistent with ASTM International Standard D7611/D7611M-19". The provision would resolve at federal level the divergence between the current standard and the state statutes described in the resin-codes article, by adopting the standard's graphic and restricting the statutory one.

The PACK Act: administration and preemption

The Federal Trade Commission would enforce the statute within its existing consumer-protection framework. The bill directs the Commission to issue compliance guidance not later than two years after enactment, while withholding substantive rulemaking authority: "Notwithstanding section 6(g), the Commission may not issue any binding rule or regulation under this section." The combination produces a regime administered through guidance and case-by-case enforcement rather than through codified rules, which places interpretive weight on the statutory definitions themselves.

The preemption clause is expressed in identity terms: "A State and political subdivision of a State may not establish, enforce, or continue in effect any provision of law or a legal requirement that is not identical with any requirement under this section." A clause in that form does not merely occupy a field prospectively; it displaces existing non-identical state requirements, including the Californian, Washington and Minnesota provisions examined elsewhere in this theme. The National Consumers League is reported to have objected at the July 2026 hearing that the bill would preempt state standards without establishing a sufficiently strong federal baseline; the bill's sponsor and industry participants are reported to have supported it on uniformity grounds.

The Truth in Labeling Act of 2026

H.R. 10048 adopts a tiered structure with lower thresholds and a different treatment of state law. A covered material qualifies as recyclable where it "is collected, separated, or otherwise recovered from the waste stream through an established recycling program for which a responsible end market exists that covers at least 60 percent of consumers or communities where the item is sold", while a qualified recyclability claim is available where the corresponding programmes cover at least 40 per cent. For compostability the bill requires that the material be "capable of being collected and accepted by at least 50 percent of the established composting programs in the United States" for an unqualified claim, and at least 30 per cent for a qualified claim.

The bill provides expressly that conversion to fuel or energy does not constitute recycling. That exclusion addresses a question the PACK Act leaves to inference from its definition of recycling, which is framed in terms of collection, sorting and reprocessing into material used to manufacture another item.

Its preemption design is the inverse of the PACK Act's. The bill states that "nothing in this Act shall preempt any State law", subject to a single exception directed at resin identification codes, in respect of which "No State may impose any requirement that conflicts with the requirement" the Act establishes. State recyclability and compostability regimes would therefore survive enactment, and the federal standard would operate as a floor rather than as a ceiling. The accompanying Senate announcement describes the object as clear federal guidelines for labelling products that are recyclable, compostable, reusable or refillable, together with a voluntary label directing consumers to the correct disposal route.

The two designs compared

The bills agree on a 60 per cent access threshold for an unqualified recyclability claim, which aligns both with the Green Guides' definition of "substantial majority" and with the collection criterion in California's section 42355.51. They diverge on three points of structure. The first is qualification: the Truth in Labeling Act specifies numerical tiers at which a qualified claim becomes available, whereas the PACK Act requires qualification without prescribing a second threshold. The second is the treatment of chemical conversion, expressly excluded in the later bill and left to the definition of recycling in the earlier one. The third, and the most consequential for packaging placed on multiple state markets, is preemption: identity preemption under the PACK Act would replace the state regimes, whereas the savings clause in the Truth in Labeling Act would leave them in place and add a federal layer, with resin codes the sole exception.

Present effect

Neither bill has legal effect. Referral, subcommittee hearing, markup or passage by one chamber does not create an obligation or displace state law; preemption under either design would depend on enactment and on the bill's effective-date provisions. Existing federal advertising principles and each applicable state statute continue to govern, and packaging that would satisfy either bill may nonetheless fail a present state requirement in California, Washington, Colorado or Minnesota. Reintroduction in a later Congress would constitute a new bill even where the text is unchanged, so that the Congress number, bill number and date of last action are the operative identifiers rather than the short title.

Primary sources

• H.R. 6832, Packaging and Claims Knowledge Act of 2025, 119th Congress, introduced text — Open source
• H.R. 10048, Truth in Labeling Act of 2026, 119th Congress, introduced text — Open source
• Office of Sen. Jeff Merkley, 'Merkley, Correa launch new effort to fix misleading recycling labels', 7 August 2026 — Open source
• Packaging Dive, report of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing of 22 July 2026 — Open source
• Federal Trade Commission Green Guides, 16 CFR part 260 — Open source
• ASTM D7611/D7611M-19

Note on sources and verification

An earlier draft of this page described only H.R. 6832 and recorded its status as referral to committee. Two corrections have been made. The subcommittee legislative hearing of 22 July 2026 before the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade has been added, and the Truth in Labeling Act of 2026 has been added as the second bill in the field.

The PACK Act particulars quoted above — the definition of "substantial majority" as 60 per cent or more, the resin-code provision and its reference to ASTM D7611/D7611M-19, the two-year guidance deadline, the exclusion of binding rulemaking notwithstanding section 6(g), and the identity-preemption clause — were confirmed against the introduced text at the URL given. The short title in the introduced text is the Packaging and Claims Knowledge Act of 2025, notwithstanding the bill's continued consideration in 2026.

The Truth in Labeling Act particulars — the 60 and 40 per cent recyclability tiers, the 50 and 30 per cent compostability tiers, the exclusion of conversion to fuel or energy from recycling, and the savings clause with its resin-code exception — were likewise confirmed against the introduced text. The sponsor is identified in that text as Mr Correa and the introduction date as 6 August 2026. The Senate companion is recorded on the basis of the announcement of 7 August 2026 cited above; the Senate bill number was not confirmed for this article, and the announcement does not itself state the numerical thresholds.

The account of the July 2026 hearing, including the positions attributed to the sponsor, to Ameripen and to the National Consumers League, rests on the trade press report cited and not on a committee transcript. No congress.gov URL is given for either bill, that site not being retrievable for this article; the GovInfo bulk-data texts are cited in its place.

Monitoring points are any subcommittee or full-committee markup of either bill, amendment to the preemption or savings clauses, referral of the Senate companion and its number, floor consideration in either chamber, and the expiry of the 119th Congress, at which point both bills would lapse and any successor would require reintroduction.

Last verified: 19 August 2026.