The Environmental Protection Agency has taken the first ever federal action against a system that misleads consumers about the recycled content in plastic products.

A ProPublica investigation in June showed how the plastics industry uses a controversial accounting method called mass balance to advertise plastic products as 20% or 30% recycled even if they physically contain less than 1% recycled content.

It involves a number shuffle, done only on paper, that inflates the advertised recycledness of one product by reducing the advertised recycledness of another, often less lucrative, product. Done purely for marketing, it has been criticized by environmentalists as a greenwashing tactic.

According to an EPA policy released this month, companies that want the federal government’s stamp of approval for their sustainable products can no longer use such convoluted math.

The EPA’s Safer Choice standard is a voluntary program that allows manufacturers to affix a “Safer Choice” label to their dish soap, laundry detergent and other products. The roughly 1,800 products that have earned that distinction include household cleaners sold in grocery stores and more niche products like industrial carpet stain removers. Until now, the program’s criteria have focused on encouraging brands to reduce their use of toxic chemicals. But the updated standard, released on Aug. 8, strengthens requirements for sustainable packaging as well; plastic packaging must contain at least 15% postconsumer recycled content.

A key requirement: The content must be determined “by weight,” effectively forbidding the mathematical sleight of hand.

“This is the turning point” that will allow us to start killing the “hoax” of mass balance, said Jan Dell, a chemical engineer who founded The Last Beach Cleanup, a nonprofit fighting plastic pollution.

It’s the latest of several Biden administration actions to tackle the plastic crisis, which is smothering communities, oceans and even our bodies with toxic material that doesn’t break down in nature. Last month, the White House announced that the federal government — the world’s largest buyer of consumer products — would stop purchasing single-use plastic by 2035. Reuters also reported that U.S. negotiators would support global limits on plastic production in ongoing talks for a United Nations plastics treaty.

This EPA decision shows that President Joe Biden’s team is adopting more aggressive policies to curb plastic, said Anthony Schiavo, senior director at Lux Research. Schiavo’s company analyzes global trends in emerging petrochemical and plastics technologies.

The new requirement effectively shuts out of the program any product made through a much-heralded chemical recycling technology called pyrolysis, which ProPublica’s investigation revealed to be so inefficient that it cannot yield more than 10% recycled content. In practice, it yields far less. Mass balance has been key to marketing those products and the technology.

A prominent plastics industry trade group defended mass balance and cited its use in other products like paper and fair-trade chocolate. “Mass balance is a widely accepted accounting tool used by a variety of industries that would encourage more recycled content in the overall economy,” Adam Peer, the American Chemistry Council’s senior director of plastics sustainability, said in an email.

The EPA gives annual awards to participants that have done particularly well in its program. Those recognized in 2023, for instance, included The Clorox Co., Rust-Oleum, Ecos and Seventh Generation, which grew their inventories of less-toxic cleaning products and educated consumers about the Safer Choice program.

ProPublica asked these four companies whether it would be difficult to transition to plastic packaging that meets the 15% threshold. None responded to requests for comment.

The EPA did not comment directly on the policy’s implications for pyrolysis or mass balance. The agency instead referred ProPublica to comments it made last year to the Federal Trade Commission about mass balance, calling it deceptive and advising against promoting it. “It would be clearer to focus on calculations that involve the actual amount of material used,” the agency told the FTC.

After an earlier version of the EPA policy, posted in November, left the door open for the use of mass balance, activists including Dell warned the agency about the accounting method’s flaws. And a group of state and local officials, including the attorneys general of 11 states, shared similar reservations on how the EPA should define recycled content.

In response to those comments, the EPA wrote that the final policy was written to “respect this consumer expectation” that “products with labels indicating use of recycled content contain post-consumer recycled content.”

“Common sense has prevailed here,” said Peter Blair, who co-wrote the activists’ comments with Dell. Blair, policy and advocacy director at the environmental group Just Zero, said he was thrilled that the EPA’s final decision prioritized “truthful, accurate” labeling of recycled content for a program that’s not explicitly about plastic.

The activists’ campaign reflects the mounting pressure to scrutinize and regulate how plastic — especially plastic recycled via newer technologies — is marketed. European regulators have banned the most extreme version of mass balance. And the FTC is updating the Green Guides, which spell out how companies can advertise recycled content in sustainable products. Those officials, too, are considering whether to allow mass balance.

Blair hopes the EPA decision sets a precedent for where the federal government will stand.