The American Chemistry Council’s Plastics Division announced a set of principles for mass balance certification standards that will trace and help increase plastics recycling and support markets for the outputs from advanced plastics recycling. A mass balance approach measures the amount of used plastic that enters advanced recycling processes and makes certain that claims of recycled content in the resultant product do not exceed that amount. Mass balance has previously been successful in developing high levels of transparency and consumer trust for other materials such as paper and renewable energy.

These standards will make it easier for U.S. brands and other stakeholders to use more recycled content in their products and packaging and communicate this to their customers. These principles also have received the support of ACC’s Chemical Recycling Alliance (CRA), which represents the leading companies providing technologies in advanced plastics recycling.