For paper and paperboard packaging producers, calling a package “recyclable” has often begun with the substrate.

Is it paper?

Can the fiber be recovered?

Can a conventional paper mill process it?

Those questions will remain important.

But legislation now advancing through the U.S. House would make one point considerably harder to ignore:

the recyclability of the material and the recyclability claim made on the finished package are not necessarily the same thing.

On September 1, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade advanced H.R. 6832, the Packaging and Claims Knowledge Act, by voice vote and sent the amended bill to the full committee. The measure remains a legislative proposal; it has not passed the House, Senate or become law.

If enacted in its current amended form, the PACK Act would establish federal requirements governing voluntary claims that consumer packaging is:

recyclable, compostable or reusable.

Companies would not be forced to make those claims.

But once a company chooses to make one, the bill would require an accredited independent third party to certify it.

That could turn three familiar words on packaging artwork into something much closer to a documented product specification.

And for the fiber-packaging sector, that may be the most consequential part of the proposal.

The Bill Is Voluntary Until You Say “Recyclable”

The distinction is easy to miss.

The PACK Act does not require a cereal box, folding carton, paper cup or e-commerce mailer to carry a recyclability statement.

The FTC would also be prohibited from compelling a company to make one.

But if a brand owner decides that “recyclable” belongs on the package, certification becomes mandatory under the amended text.

That changes the commercial calculation.

Today, recyclability language can function as:

a sustainability claim,

a disposal message,

a procurement requirement,

a brand commitment,

or a response to retailer expectations.

Under the proposed framework, companies making the covered claim would also need to think about:

Who certifies it?

What evidence supports it?

Does the entire package qualify?

How widely can consumers actually recycle it?

And for converters:

does changing one coating, window, closure or other component change the validity of the claim?

That moves recyclability further upstream into package development.

The Material Alone Would Not Be Enough

This is probably the most important passage for paper-packaging engineers.

The amended bill explicitly says packaging would not be considered recyclable in two circumstances.

First, where a non-detachable component significantly limits the ability to recycle the package.

Second, where packaging is made from recyclable material but, because of its shape, size or another characteristic, is not accepted in recycling programs.

That is an important shift in emphasis.

A package could begin with a recyclable paperboard substrate and still require a more complicated assessment once it becomes a finished pack.

Think about the engineering decisions made after the base sheet leaves the paper mill:

barrier coatings,

polymer layers,

windows,

labels,

adhesives,

closures,

foils,

wet-strength chemistry,

printing and surface treatments.

The bill does not state that any one of those features automatically makes paper packaging non-recyclable.

It would be inaccurate to say that.

What matters under the proposed wording is whether a non-detachable component significantly limits recycling of the finished package.

That puts the design question in the right place:

not “Is paper recyclable?” but “What did we do to the paper before putting the package on the shelf?”

This Is Particularly Relevant to the Paper-to-Plastic Substitution Market

That distinction matters because fiber packaging is moving into increasingly demanding applications.

A simple folding carton has one set of requirements.

A fiber-based package replacing a flexible plastic structure may need:

moisture resistance,

grease resistance,

oxygen barrier,

heat sealability,

aroma protection,

wet strength,

or extended food-contact performance.

Those functions can require coatings and combinations that make the recycling discussion more complicated.

The market therefore contains a tension.

To replace more plastic, paper packaging often needs more functionality.

To maintain a straightforward recyclability claim, designers may need to control how that functionality affects the established recycling stream.

The PACK Act would not resolve that engineering problem.

But if enacted, it could make the commercial consequences of getting it wrong more visible.

A technically impressive fiber package may lose some of its sustainability-marketing value if the finished structure cannot support the claim printed on it.

Sixty Percent Is Not a New Number—but It Could Gain More Weight

The amended PACK Act defines a “substantial majority” as 60% or more.

If recycling programs or facilities are available to at least 60% of consumers or communities where the product is sold, and the entire package is recyclable apart from minor incidental components, the company could avoid an availability qualification on its recyclability claim.

Below that threshold, the claim generally would need to tell consumers about limited recycling access, either through a percentage or through wording whose strength reflects availability.

The 60% concept itself is not new.

The FTC’s current Green Guides already advise marketers to qualify recyclable claims when appropriate recycling facilities are unavailable to at least 60% of consumers or communities where the product is sold.

That is an important point because the PACK Act should not be described as inventing the 60% threshold from nothing.

The bigger change is the structure around it.

The FTC Green Guides are guidance explaining how the agency evaluates environmental marketing claims; they are not standalone federal regulations.

The PACK Act would put requirements directly into federal law and pair the claims with third-party certification.

So the question moves from:

“What does FTC guidance recommend?”

toward:

“Can we demonstrate that our claim meets a statutory requirement?”

For National Brands, Geography Suddenly Matters

Consider a paper package distributed nationwide.

The board specification may be identical in every state.

The printing may be identical.

The barrier treatment may be identical.

But the collection and recycling system is not identical everywhere.

That creates one of the persistent difficulties behind environmental packaging claims in the United States.

What a consumer can place into a recycling stream in one market may not be accepted in another.

The proposed bill tries to deal with that through qualified claims.

If access does not reach the defined substantial-majority threshold, companies would need to communicate that limitation.

That means recyclability is partly an infrastructure question, not simply a material-science question.

A laboratory can tell you whether fibers can potentially be recovered from a particular construction.

A recycling-access assessment asks something else:

Can enough of the people actually buying this package access a system capable of handling it?

Packaging developers increasingly need to understand both.

“Recyclable” Would Also Mean More Than Collection

The amended definition deserves attention.

It defines recyclable packaging as packaging that can be collected, sorted, reprocessed and ultimately reused in manufacturing or to make another item.

That language matters.

The circularity discussion has increasingly challenged the idea that placing a package into a collection bin automatically demonstrates successful recycling.

Collection is only the beginning.

Material still needs to pass through sorting.

Then reprocessing.

Then it needs an outlet capable of using the recovered material.

For the paper industry, this distinction is familiar.

Recovering used paper works because there are mills capable of consuming recovered fiber and producing another paper or paperboard product.

If a package technically enters collection but its construction prevents useful fiber recovery, the recycling claim becomes harder to defend.

The PACK Act therefore points toward the whole recovery chain, not merely disposal-bin eligibility.

The Bill Specifically Tells the FTC to Consider Paper

Paper is not simply caught indirectly in generic packaging language.

The amended legislation directs the FTC, when developing compliance guidance, to consider different packaging materials including:

paper, plastic, glass, metal and combinations of materials.

It must also consider different packaging colours, shapes and sizes.

For the paper industry, that matters because a material-neutral definition does not necessarily produce a material-neutral recycling assessment.

Paper recycling infrastructure behaves differently from plastics recycling.

A paperboard carton does not go through the same sorting and reprocessing system as a PET bottle.

A coated paper structure may create different technical questions from a multilayer polymer pouch.

The bill recognizes that the FTC guidance will have to deal with those differences rather than creating one identical technical test for every substrate.

Exactly what that eventual paper-specific guidance would say is unknown.

The legislation gives the FTC up to two years after enactment to issue it.

Until that guidance exists, it would be premature to predict detailed certification requirements for individual paper grades or packaging structures.

Third-Party Certification Could Become a New Gate in Packaging Development

This may be the provision that changes workflows most.

The amended text says a person may not make a recyclable, compostable or reusable claim unless an accredited third-party certification body has certified that claim.

The substitute amendment also spells out expectations for those certification and accreditation bodies.

Among other requirements, the certification system must operate independently, possess technical competence, apply documented and scientifically valid methodologies, manage conflicts of interest and maintain traceability of certification decisions.

For converters, this potentially adds another step between package development and market launch.

The future workflow could increasingly resemble:

design → test → validate → certify → print claim → commercialize.

That is quite different from treating recycling language mainly as an artwork approval.

There is no reliable public information yet on what certification would cost, how long it would take or how frequently certificates might need to be renewed.

The bill does not provide enough information to calculate that burden.

But adding independent certification inevitably raises operational questions for packaging suppliers.

Who owns the certification—the converter or the brand?

What happens after a material supplier changes?

Does a new barrier formulation trigger a new review?

Can a certification cover a family of similar formats?

How will companies manage hundreds or thousands of SKUs?

Those details will determine whether certification becomes a relatively routine documentation exercise or a substantial package-development task.

We do not know the answers yet.

This Could Reward Simpler Fiber Packaging

There is one potential design consequence worth watching.

If every additional non-detachable component creates another issue that has to be evaluated, simpler structures may become easier to substantiate.

That does not mean the PACK Act requires mono-material paper packaging.

It does not.

Nor does it mean coatings or plastic components would automatically disqualify a fiber package.

But from an engineering perspective, fewer problematic components generally mean fewer questions during recycling qualification.

That could strengthen an existing packaging-development trend:

designing the required functionality with the least disruptive material complexity possible.

For paper producers developing dispersion coatings, barrier papers and heat-sealable fiber structures, that could become commercially important.

The customer may no longer ask only:

“Does this coating provide the barrier I need?”

The next question could be:

“Can the finished package still support the recyclability claim we want to print?”

That puts recycling compatibility closer to conventional performance criteria such as Cobb value, grease resistance, seal strength and machine runnability.

The Bill Also Draws an Interesting Line Around Symbols

The amended PACK Act defines a covered “claim” broadly.

It includes representations made through:

writing,

symbols,

marks,

graphics,

and electronic or digital links.

But it excludes instructions telling consumers how to recycle, compost or reuse the packaging.

That distinction could become important for packaging artwork.

A disposal instruction and an environmental performance claim are not necessarily the same legal communication.

Likewise, digital communication does not automatically escape the framework simply because it sits behind a link rather than being fully printed on the panel.

For brands increasingly using QR codes and connected packaging to communicate disposal information, the precise line between an instruction and a claim could matter.

FTC guidance may eventually provide more clarity.

The current bill text does not answer every artwork scenario.

The Bigger Fight Is Over Federal Preemption

The technical recyclability rules are only half the story.

The politically significant provision is federal preemption.

Under the amended text, states and local governments generally could not maintain or enforce different requirements governing recyclable, reusable or compostable claims on consumer-product packaging.

State rules identical to the federal requirements could remain.

That is a major reason packaging and consumer-goods organizations support the legislation.

AMERIPEN argues that national brands increasingly face inconsistent state requirements, creating duplicated compliance work and making it difficult to use one package across the country.

For a converter, the commercial appeal is straightforward.

One national artwork specification is easier to manage than multiple state-specific versions of the same package.

It reduces the possibility of:

separate print runs,

state-specific inventory,

different legal reviews,

different claims panels,

and SKU fragmentation.

But that advantage is exactly where opposition begins.

Critics Say One Standard Is Not Necessarily a Strong Standard

The National Consumers League has opposed the PACK Act, arguing that federal preemption could displace stronger state labeling laws without establishing a sufficiently strong national baseline to prevent misleading environmental claims.

That is the central policy disagreement.

Supporters argue:

one independently certified national standard can provide clearer claims and lower compliance complexity.

Critics argue:

states should remain able to impose stricter rules where they believe federal standards are insufficient.

Both sides are talking about consumer confidence.

They disagree about how to achieve it.

This debate is particularly relevant because California’s SB 343 truth-in-labeling regime—which restricts the use of recyclability symbols and claims unless specified conditions are met—has itself become the subject of litigation. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction in July blocking enforcement while a challenge brought by industry groups proceeds.

The PACK Act would address the problem from a different direction by creating a federal framework that preempts differing state claim requirements.

So this legislation is not emerging into an empty regulatory space.

It is part of a much larger argument over who should decide what “recyclable” means on a package sold across America.

Preemption Would Not Mean Federal Control of Every Packaging Policy

There is an important limitation here.

AMERIPEN’s explanation of the bill says the preemption provision is aimed at the covered claims and labeling requirements, rather than eliminating states’ ability to pursue other packaging policies such as extended producer responsibility or recycling-infrastructure programs.

That distinction matters.

The PACK Act should not be described as a federal takeover of all state packaging regulation.

Its focus is much narrower:

what companies can say about recyclability, compostability and reusability on consumer packaging.

States could still have significant influence over the systems that determine whether those claims are meaningful in practice.

That creates an interesting division.

The federal government could define the conditions under which a claim is made.

State and local systems would still substantially influence the collection infrastructure on which part of that claim depends.

Reuse Gets a Tougher Definition Than “Use It Again”

The reusable provisions also deserve attention.

Under the amended text, an unqualified reusable claim generally could not be made unless the company provides an actual means for reuse—either through a collection-and-reuse system or by offering a product consumers can buy to reuse the original packaging.

The bill defines reusable packaging as being designed for more than one trip, rotation or use for the same purpose for which it was primarily designed.

That addresses another common packaging ambiguity.

A durable box that a consumer might personally keep for storage is not necessarily the same thing as packaging designed around an operating reuse system.

For fiber packaging developers exploring refill and reusable systems, that distinction could become increasingly important.

Third-party certification for reusable claims would take effect two years after enactment under the current amendment.

Compostability Faces the Same Infrastructure Problem

The bill takes a similarly practical approach to compostability.

A compostable claim would require competent and reliable scientific evidence.

It would also need qualification where packaging cannot safely or promptly break down in home composting, where the claim could mislead consumers about landfill disposal, or where appropriate municipal or institutional composting facilities are unavailable to a substantial majority of relevant consumers or communities.

Again, the material alone does not finish the story.

A package may meet an industrial compostability standard while the person buying it has no industrial composting access.

That is the same infrastructure-versus-material problem seen in recycling.

And it reinforces the direction of the bill:

an environmental claim is supposed to describe a realistic end-of-life pathway, not merely a theoretical material property.

Paper Packaging Could Gain From This—But It Could Also Face More Scrutiny

For paper and paperboard suppliers, there are two possible effects.

The opportunity is obvious.

Fiber packaging benefits from an established recycling infrastructure across much of the United States.

If the industry can substantiate recyclability consistently, a national framework could potentially make credible paper-packaging claims easier to communicate across state lines.

But the scrutiny could also increase.

The fact that the primary substrate is paper would not end the evaluation.

Functional packaging structures would increasingly have to demonstrate that the package as sold works in the recovery system.

That could place greater commercial importance on:

recyclability testing,

mill compatibility,

coating design,

repulpability,

component separation,

and communication between mills, converters, brands and recyclers.

In that sense, a tougher claims regime could reward paper innovation—but only when the recycling performance keeps pace with the functional performance.

The Real Shift Is From Marketing Claim to Technical File

This is the part of the PACK Act I think packaging companies should watch most closely.

“Recyclable” has historically sat partly in marketing.

The amended bill moves it closer to quality assurance.

A future package development meeting may need people from:

R&D,

sustainability,

regulatory affairs,

procurement,

packaging engineering,

legal,

marketing,

and recycling certification.

Why?

Because one word on the front or back panel could depend on decisions made by all of them.

That changes the value of evidence.

A vague statement from a material supplier saying a coating is “recycling friendly” may no longer be enough.

Customers may increasingly want:

test methods,

defined package constructions,

component specifications,

access data,

certification records,

and controlled change management.

If the substrate changes, document it.

If the coating changes, review it.

If the closure changes, determine whether it matters.

If the package is sold into another market, check access.

Recyclability begins to behave less like advertising copy and more like a controlled packaging specification.

That Could Change the Relationship Between Paper Mills and Converters

Paper producers have traditionally sold performance characteristics.

Basis weight.

Caliper.

Stiffness.

Brightness.

Surface strength.

Printability.

Barrier functionality.

Increasingly, they also need to sell evidence about what happens after use.

But a paper mill cannot certify the entire downstream package by itself.

It does not necessarily control the adhesive.

Or the plastic window.

Or the coating applied by another converter.

Or the final shape.

Or the closure.

That means recyclability claims increasingly require a chain of evidence.

The paper producer proves characteristics of the substrate.

The converter controls the finished structure.

The brand controls the claim and market placement.

The certification body evaluates the evidence.

And recycling infrastructure determines whether the claim corresponds with real-world access.

This is why legislation about one word on a label can eventually reach all the way back to paper development.

The PACK Act Still Has a Long Way to Go

Nothing in this article should be read as describing current federal law.

H.R. 6832 was introduced in December 2025 and was only advanced from the Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade Subcommittee on September 1, 2026. The amended version now moves to the full House Energy and Commerce Committee.

It would still need further congressional action before becoming law.

The text can also change.

The certification framework can change.

The preemption language can change.

The treatment of individual claims can change.

And even if enacted, important implementation questions would remain for the FTC.

For packaging companies, therefore, this is not yet a compliance deadline.

It is a design signal.

The Most Important Question Is No Longer “Is Paper Recyclable?”

Paper packaging has a strong recycling story.

But increasingly sophisticated paper structures mean the industry cannot rely indefinitely on the reputation of cellulose alone.

Barrier paper.

Coated board.

Paper-plastic combinations.

Easy-open features.

Windows.

Closures.

Labels.

Adhesives.

Every additional function creates another engineering decision.

The PACK Act’s amended language puts a simple principle behind all of them:

the claim belongs to the finished package, not just the material from which it started.

If that principle becomes federal law, packaging suppliers that can document recycling performance early in development may gain an advantage over those trying to prove it after the package has already been designed.

That may ultimately be the most important implication for the pulp and paper sector.

The next generation of fiber packaging will not succeed merely because it replaces plastic.

It will need to perform the product-protection job, run economically on converting equipment and preserve a recycling pathway credible enough to substantiate what is printed on the pack.

For paper mills, converters and brand owners, one question is therefore worth putting into the design brief now:

If a third party had to certify the word “recyclable” on this finished package tomorrow, what evidence would you actually be able to hand them?

Last Updated on 10/09/2026 by Jota Machinery