California fancies itself the nation’s conscience on plastic packaging. It passed a sweeping law. It set ambitious targets. It lectured companies, pressured suppliers, and demanded a cleaner, greener, circular future. And now the results are in — or, more precisely, the garbage is still in.
A January report by the Los Angeles Times documents what skeptics have argued all along: California’s vaunted plastics recycling system is barely functioning. The state’s own waste agency, CalRecycle, published data showing that polypropylene — the plastic used in yogurt containers, margarine tubs, and microwavable trays — is being recycled at a rate of just 2%. Colored shampoo and detergent bottles come in at 5%. Even materials that advocates have long promoted as highly recyclable, like clear water bottles and medicine containers, are hitting only 16%. Not a single plastic category in the CalRecycle report exceeds a recycling rate of 23%. These are numbers from the state that was supposed to show the rest of the country how it’s done.
And there’s more. CalRecycle also withdrew proposed regulations meant to implement Senate Bill 54 — a 2022 law touted as landmark legislation requiring that most single-use packaging be recyclable or compostable by 2032. The agency pulled its proposed rules before the state’s Office of Administrative Law could issue a verdict on them. California’s grand plastic recycling plan is, in effect, unraveling.
None of this should surprise anyone who has followed NLPC’s Corporate Integrity Project. We said exactly this would happen — and we didn’t need a government report to know it.
Last year NLPC initiated what we called a “truth-in-plastics” shareholder proposal campaign, filing resolutions at Colgate-Palmolive and Walmart. Our argument was not complicated: the recycled-plastics agenda is not grounded in science or economics. It is driven by advocacy groups whose goal is to stigmatize petrochemicals, impose costs on industry, and dress up anti-capitalist ideology in environmental clothing. The real driver of plastic pollution is not plastic production — it is inadequate waste management, predominantly in developing-world economies — but that inconvenient truth doesn’t generate foundation grants or news coverage.
At the Walmart annual meeting last summer, we put it plainly: forced recycled content is a “plastics tariff.” When Walmart demands that a packaging vendor use 25% recycled content in a plastic clamshell container, the cost of that container goes up — and somebody pays for it. Usually the customer. Meanwhile the environment sees no measurable benefit.
We said the same at Colgate-Palmolive, where the company’s celebrated recyclable toothpaste tube turned out to cost significantly more than conventional packaging while producing no environmental gain. “Colgate pays significantly more for feel-good measures that accomplish no benefit for the environment,” we told shareholders. The company’s board opposed the proposal, as did Walmart’s — but the companies themselves soon began validating our case. Walmart, Mondelēz, Mars, and Nestlé all dropped out of the U.S. Plastics Pact after concluding they simply could not meet the targets they had signed on to. Sound familiar? Those are the same kind of targets that CalRecycle is now struggling to defend in Sacramento.
For 2026, NLPC has submitted similar proposals at three companies: Coca-Cola, Mondelēz International — the maker of Oreos, Ritz, and Chips Ahoy — and Home Depot. Each proposal asks the company’s board to commission an objective, science-based report on its plastics packaging policies — one that weighs actual environmental tradeoffs and economic costs instead of simply taking the Ellen MacArthur Foundation‘s word for it.
Mondelēz is a particularly apt example of the California problem at the corporate level. The company in 2018 announced it would make “all packaging recyclable” by 2025. It subsequently pledged a 25% reduction in virgin plastic use in its rigid packaging. By 2025, both commitments had stalled. Recyclability rates had plateaued. Virgin plastic reductions had faltered. Then the company quietly left the U.S. Plastics Pact. California made bold commitments too. California also fell far short.
Home Depot has its own version of the problem. The company has committed to requiring suppliers to eliminate or convert 200 million pounds of plastic used in products and packaging to recycled or alternative materials by 2028 — yet Home Depot’s own sustainability disclosures acknowledge that recycled plastics are harder to source, less physically consistent, and more expensive than the virgin plastics they are meant to replace. The company is asking its suppliers to absorb a self-imposed cost increase in pursuit of targets that, as the California experience confirms, may never be achievable.
We are not alone in raising red flags about these kinds of mandates. Last fall, a coalition of state attorneys general sent warnings to organizations including the Sustainable Packaging Coalition and GreenBlue, raising concerns about potential antitrust violations arising from industry consortia that collectively pressure plastics suppliers to comply with recycling demands. When state law enforcement is scrutinizing the legal basis for these alliances, it is not a sign that the program is working.
California had every regulatory tool available to it. It had a legislature that passed SB 54. It had a committed activist base and a sympathetic media. And still, the recycling numbers came back in the single digits.
Corporate America should take note: the problem is not effort or intent. The problem is that the underlying premise — that a “circular economy” for plastics is economically viable and environmentally superior — is false. NLPC has been making that case with data and citations. California just made it with its own government report.
