A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction on Tuesday that blocks enforcement of California SB 343, the state’s “Truth in Labeling” law for recyclable materials, which was scheduled to begin October 4.

  • Packaging associations including the Flexible Packaging Association and the American Forest & Paper Association, along with more than a dozen other groups, filed a federal lawsuit in March, arguing that SB 343 restricts free speech.


Focused on products and packaging sold into the state, the law limits use of certain claims – the triangular chasing arrows symbol, resin identification codes inside that symbol on certain plastic items, and other claims that suggest an item is recyclable – unless the item can be accepted and processed for recycling in more than 60% of the state. In addition, there must be demonstrated commercial demand for that recycled material.

ICYMI: What California’s ‘Truth In Recycling’ Law Means For Your Business

Packaging Dive reports that Judge William Q. Hayes found merit in the First Amendment challenge and thus the state is now “enjoined from enforcing SB 343 until further order of the Court.” Further, reports Resource Recycling, the judge found four separate provisions of the law unconstitutionally vague but “severable from the rest of the statute,” leaving open the potential for the law’s core “60/60” collection-and-sorting threshold that mandates:

  • The material must be accepted for regular collection by recycling programs serving at least 60% of California’s population.
  • At least 60% of recycling programs in the state must actually sort the material into defined, usable streams for recycling.


The provisions deemed unacceptably vague covered requirements that recyclable material becomes feedstock to produce new products and that packaging be “designed to ensure recyclability,” among others.

It’s important to note that this is not a final ruling, as the state is likely to appeal, and it’s not yet clear whether the injunction applies to all producers or just the 18 plaintiffs in the suit. An update from the law firm DLA Piper suggests that due to recent Supreme Court rulings, businesses that are not members of the plaintiff organizations could still face enforcement risk in October.

The ruling could also raise questions for implementation of SB 54, California’s extended producer responsibility law for packaging. CalRecycle, which is tasked with administering both laws, “lacks authority to implement or enforce SB 343 and has repeatedly confirmed that a determination of recyclability under one statute does not constitute a determination of recyclability under the other. Neverthleless, these two laws rely on shared terminology and overlapping criteria for recyclability,” according to the DLA Piper analysis.

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Please contact Rachel Zoch, CAS, PPAI’s public affairs manager, at rachelz@ppai.org if you have any questions about regulatory issues or government affairs.