A note from Steve Bender, Chairman of the United States Green Chamber of Commerce.
In July I attended Sustainable Plastics USA 2026 in Los Angeles as a delegate, where Bill Shireman spoke on the panel “Advancing a Circular Economy by Promoting Sustainable Plastics.” I heard a lot of smart people on that subject over the course of the conference. Bill’s was the most compelling case I heard, because he wasn’t selling a technology. He was making an argument about how systems actually change.
Last week he published that argument in Capitol Weekly, warning that a well-meaning bill could set California recycling back decades. I agree with him, and our members should be paying attention.
What AB 2253 would do
AB 2253 would carve chemical recycling and mass-balance accounting out of SB 54. The intent behind it is honest. Nobody wants recycled-content claims that don’t hold up, and the skepticism has been earned. But the effect would be to shrink the toolbox at exactly the moment we need every tool working.
Mechanical recycling cannot do this alone
Mechanical recycling is the workhorse of this system and always will be. It also cannot process everything. What it handles worst is mixed and contaminated plastic, which is exactly the material most likely to end up in a landfill, an incinerator, or a river. Closing off the technologies that can take it doesn’t make that plastic disappear. It moves it somewhere with weaker standards than ours.
Mass balance is accounting, not a loophole
Mass balance is the same accounting logic that has tracked certified lumber and fair-trade coffee for years: verify what goes in, verify what comes out, audit the books. The fix for a weak claim is verification, not prohibition, and that means transparency, third-party auditing, public disclosure, and real enforcement against deceptive marketing.
Give SB 54 the same runway CRV got
Bill helped build California’s CRV system. It didn’t start out recovering 74% of PET beverage bottles. It got there through what he calls relentless progress rather than immediate perfection. SB 54 deserves that same runway.
My ask to legislators: set AB 2253 aside. Let SB 54 do its work. And let’s get environmental advocates, producers, recyclers, and scientists at one table to strengthen verification together, rather than spending another cycle litigating which side is the enemy.
The plastic doesn’t care who wins that argument. It’s still in the river.
Read Bill’s original pieces
- A well-meaning bill could set California recycling back decades — Capitol Weekly, Aug. 25, 2026
- Inside the Circle: Put every package where it performs best — Resource Recycling, Aug. 10, 2026
- Inside the Circle: Don’t break the sustainable accounting system — In Between Times
Steve Bender
Chairman, United States Green Chamber of Commerce