Federal Judge Blocks California's Recycling Label Law
Get the Energy newsletter
Daily energy & climate — solar, EVs, oil, the policy fights and tech bets shaping the transition. Free.
- U.S. District Judge William Hayes issued a preliminary injunction blocking SB 343, finding its key provisions "unconstitutionally vague" and likely to infringe protected commercial speech, halting enforcement that had been set to begin this fall.
- SB 343, passed in 2021, would have restricted the chasing arrows symbol to products accepted by recycling programs serving at least 60% of Californians and actually sorted for recycling rather than merely collected.
- Nick Lapis of Californians Against Waste condemned the ruling, arguing "the First Amendment protects free expression, not a corporation's right to commit consumer fraud," reflecting environmental advocates' alarm that the symbol routinely misleads consumers.
- Hayes reasoned the law would prompt companies to simply remove the chasing arrows symbol rather than redesign products, and that products below the 60% recyclability threshold would in theory no longer make it into bins — potentially sending more material to landfills.
- The judge suggested a less restrictive alternative path: labels with qualifiers explaining local recyclability, such as one reading "accepted by recyclers in the greater Los Angeles area but nowhere else in California," which he said SB 343 would not allow.
- Earth Island Institute and Californians Against Waste joined California as defendants on July 27, and the ruling could also jeopardize the state's separate extended producer responsibility law, which relies on the same definition of recycling and is already under challenge.
Why it matters: The ruling hands plastics and packaging companies a First Amendment win that environmental advocates warn will make it harder for other states to police misleading 'recyclable' claims, and could spill into California's separate extended producer responsibility law, which depends on the same definition of recycling now under attack.
