Tell California Lawmakers: Help us Fight Plastic Pollution and Drive Down Costs for California Families
- af: Circle America
- mottagare: California Governor Gavin Newsom, State Assembly and Senate
Every year, millions of tons of plastic pour into the ocean — fouling beaches, entangling seabirds and sea turtles, and breaking down into fragments that drift through every marine food web. Roughly two-thirds of all the plastic ever made is still out there, in our landfills, rivers, and seas. At current rates, one landmark study projects, plastic in the ocean could outweigh fish by 2050. And the ocean is sending it back: microplastics now turn up in the seafood we eat, and increasingly in our own bodies.
Decades ago, California passed landmark legislation to recycle bottles and cans, a system that has recycled more than half a trillion beverage containers in the past forty years. It's a great start, but there's still a long way to go. Most plastic packaging still ends up buried, burned, or loose in the environment.
That is why California passed SB 54, the strongest packaging law in America. It requires a 25 percent reduction in single-use plastic, a 65 percent recycling rate, and fully recyclable or compostable packaging by 2032 — with producers, not taxpayers, paying the bill. But just as the state is poised to act, a well-intentioned bill in Sacramento threatens to knock the legs out from under it. Assembly Bill 2253 would ban "mass balance" accounting for recycled content — and with it, the only method capable of recycling most plastic waste at scale today.
This bill would have two immediate negative consequences:
**More plastic pollution, for longer.** Mechanical recycling can't process the contaminated, mixed, and flexible plastics that make up much of what reaches landfills, waterways, and the ocean. Closing off other recovery pathways before we've evaluated them means more of that material ends up in the environment.
**Higher costs for California families.** Restricting the tools manufacturers use to source and verify recycled content raises the cost of complying with SB 54, and those costs will reach consumers. It also pushes production and processing to states with weaker environmental standards, and takes California jobs with it.
Will you sign this petition today and send a message to California lawmakers urging them to oppose Assembly Bill 2253? Your support will help make a difference for clean oceans and an affordable California!
We're writing today to ask you to do everything in your power to stop Assembly Bill 2253.
Should AB 2253 proceed, the consequences will be:
**More plastic pollution, for longer.** Mechanical recycling can't process the contaminated, mixed, and flexible plastics that make up much of what reaches landfills, waterways, and the ocean. Closing off other recovery pathways before we've evaluated them means more of that material ends up in the environment.
**Higher costs for California families.** Restricting the tools manufacturers use to source and verify recycled content raises the cost of complying with SB 54, and those costs will reach consumers. It also pushes production and processing to states with weaker environmental standards, and takes California jobs with it.
On mass balance accounting specifically — it isn't a loophole. It's one of the most widely used chain-of-custody methods in the world for supply chains where physically segregating material isn't practical, and it underpins verified sustainable sourcing well beyond plastics.
We don't defend the status quo on greenwashing. Californians deserve confidence that environmental claims are honest. We support rigorous verification.
The right response is to regulate the integrity of mass balance accounting, not eliminate it: exclude anything converted to fuel or lost as process residue from recycled-content claims, require third-party certification and transparency wherever a claim is made, and study book-and-claim accounting before legislating around it.
Thank you.
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