The bill directs the EPA to gather data, prepare national reports, and inventory materials recovery facilities and composting capacity to provide a clearer picture of U.S. recycling and composting systems. It also tasks the EPA with developing standardized rate estimates, producing end‑market sales data, and creating a metric to measure recyclables diverted from circular markets; the GAO must publish biennial reports on federal agency recycling and procurement through 2033.
Why this matters: the measure aims to close major national data gaps that hinder investment and policy decisions—identifying where capacity, contamination, and end‑market failures block recycling and composting at scale. The bill funds the work modestly ($4 million per year, FY2025–2029), protects certain confidential business information, and bars federal agencies from forcing unfunded mandates on states, tribes, or localities.
At a Glance
What It Does
Requires EPA to contract or collaborate with states, tribes, and local governments to produce a two‑year national report on composting and recycling infrastructure, then to inventory materials recovery facilities within three years and every four years thereafter. Directs EPA to develop standardized recycling rate estimates, an end‑market sales addendum, and a metric for measuring recyclables lost from circular markets; authorizes $4M/year for FY2025–2029.
Who It Affects
Materials recovery facilities (MRFs), composting facilities, state and local solid‑waste programs, municipal waste managers, manufacturers using compostable packaging, and federal procurement officers responsible for recycled/compostable product purchasing.
Why It Matters
Creates a standardized national baseline about capacity, contamination, and end‑markets that can guide investments, procurement policy, and program design. Filling those data gaps can change how jurisdictions prioritize composting expansion, recycling contracts, and supplier requirements.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill sets a concrete data agenda for the EPA. Within two years the agency must prepare a national report that evaluates composting infrastructure and recycling contamination, reviews federal, state, and local legal barriers, estimates costs and land needs for scaling composting, and examines manufacturers’ moves toward compostable packaging.
That report is intended to give policymakers a common diagnostic rather than piecemeal snapshots.
Separately, EPA must produce an inventory of materials recovery facilities within three years and update it every four years. The inventory is more than a facility count: it must describe what each MRF can actually process — including plastics by resin type and product format, paper grades, metals, glass, and other materials — so the inventory can be used to match feedstock to end‑user needs and identify geographic gaps in processing capability.The bill funds biannual collection of voluntary state data to build standardized estimated recycling rates and a national recycling rate.
EPA can use these data to offer technical assistance to jurisdictions. It also requires an update/addendum on end‑market sales (domestic and international dollars per ton) for recyclable bales and a separate report on compost sales.
To address circularity, EPA must create a metric within one year that measures the share of recyclable materials diverted from a circular market and then study the prior 10 years using that metric.The Comptroller General (GAO) has a separate mandate: publish reports every two years through 2033 showing federal agencies’ recycling and composting rates and how much they procure products with recycled, recovered, or compostable content. The bill authorizes $4 million annually for EPA to carry out these activities for FY2025–2029, includes a nondisclosure rule aligned to FOIA Exemption 4 for confidential business information, and prevents EPA or Commerce from imposing unfunded mandates on states, tribes, or local governments under this statute.
The Five Things You Need to Know
EPA must deliver a national report on composting and recycling infrastructure within 2 years, including legal barriers, infrastructure evaluations, cost and land estimates, contamination rates, and a review of manufacturer practices around compostable packaging.
Within 3 years (and every 4 years thereafter) EPA must prepare and submit to Congress an inventory/estimate of materials recovery facilities by State that details the types and formats of materials each facility can process (including plastic resin types and packaging formats).
EPA must develop, within 1 year, a metric that measures the proportion of recyclable materials diverted from a circular market and then produce a study using that metric covering the prior 10 calendar years.
The Comptroller General must publish biennial reports (through 2033) on total annual recycling and composting rates reported by federal agencies and on federal procurement of products containing recycled, recovered, or compostable materials.
The bill authorizes $4,000,000 per year for FY2025–2029 for EPA implementation, bars federal agencies from imposing unfunded mandates under the Act, and limits public disclosure of submitted data that qualifies as confidential business information.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Short title
Provides the Act’s official name: the 'Recycling and Composting Accountability Act.' This is purely titular but signals congressional intent to focus the statute on both recycling and composting rather than recycling alone.
Key definitions for implementation
Defines terms that set the scope of the statute: compost, compostable material, recyclable material, recycling, materials recovery facility (MRF), and processing. Those definitions matter because they determine what facilities and materials must be covered in the inventories and reports — for example, the MRF definition excludes general solid‑waste facilities that incidentally remove recyclables, narrowing the inventory to dedicated sorting facilities.
Two‑year EPA report on composting and contamination
Directs EPA to request data and collaborate with states, localities, and tribes to produce a report evaluating laws that hinder composting, describing existing composting programs and infrastructure, estimating costs and land needs to scale composting, and reviewing manufacturers shifting to compostable packaging. Practically, this requires EPA to gather qualitative and quantitative inputs from multiple jurisdictions and to synthesize legal and operational barriers into a single diagnostic document.
Inventory of materials recovery facilities (MRFs)
Requires EPA, in consultation with federal and local partners, to prepare a nationwide inventory of MRFs within three years and submit it to Congress, then update every four years. The inventory must include counts by State and a capabilities breakdown by material and product format (e.g., resin types, bottles versus film). That granularity is intended to let policymakers and market participants map supply (bales, feedstock types) to domestic processing demand.
Estimates of programs, access, contamination, and standardized recycling rates
Directs EPA to collaborate or contract to estimate the number and types of recycling/composting programs, materials accepted, access levels, capture/contamination rates, barriers to access, and average costs/benefits to jurisdictions. It also authorizes EPA to biannually collect voluntary state data to build standardized recycling rate estimates and a national rate, and to use those data to provide technical assistance. These are voluntary collections but are tied to authorized funding to encourage participation and to produce comparability across jurisdictions.
End‑market reporting and confidentiality protections
Requires EPA to update the Save Our Seas 2.0 end‑market report with dollar‑per‑ton domestic and international sales of recyclable bales and to prepare a separate report on compost sales; both must be submitted to Congress within three years. It also bars public disclosure of information that meets FOIA Exemption 4 standards — protecting trade secrets and confidential business information while limiting public access to some market data.
GAO reporting, circularity metric, funding, and administration limits
Section 4 requires the Comptroller General to publish biennial reports on federal recycling/composting rates and procurement through 2033. Section 5 instructs EPA to create a metric within one year for recyclable materials diverted from circular markets and then study the prior 10 years. Section 6 authorizes $4M/year for FY2025–2029 for implementation. Section 7 prevents EPA or Commerce from exercising authority under the Act in a way that would impose unfunded mandates on states, tribes, or localities, and reiterates the nondisclosure rule for confidential data.
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Explore Environment in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- State and local solid‑waste planners — they get standardized data on local processing capacity, contamination rates, and cost estimates that can prioritize investments and federal grant applications.
- Materials recovery facilities and composting operators — a national inventory and end‑market data can reveal demand signals and help attract capital to expand accepted streams or upgrade sorting capabilities.
- Federal procurement and sustainability officers — GAO reporting on agency purchasing of recycled and compostable products supplies a consistent basis to measure progress against sustainability goals.
- Manufacturers and packaging designers — the bill’s focus on end markets and composting pathways can clarify whether switching to compostable packaging is supported by actual end‑of‑life infrastructure.
- Municipalities and agricultural end users — better data about compost production and sales can open local supply chains for soil amendments and reduce landfill disposal costs.
Who Bears the Cost
- EPA — responsible for coordinating data collection, contracting for studies, building and maintaining the MRF inventory, and producing multiple reports; the authorized $4M/year is modest relative to the work requested.
- State and local governments — must respond to EPA requests, provide voluntary data for rate estimates, and may need to devote staff time or systems to supply standardized information.
- Materials recovery facilities and composters — may need to share operational or sales data (some confidential) and could face added expectations about transparency or standardization of their processing specifications.
- Manufacturers moving to compostable packaging — may face testing, certification, and potentially higher product costs if composting infrastructure is inadequate or if product formats cause contamination.
- Private sector market participants — disclosure (even with exemptions) and new national metrics may alter price signals and contractual expectations for recyclable bales and compost, producing short‑term market adjustments.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is between producing a high‑quality, transparent national picture of recycling and composting systems (which requires standardized reporting, potentially prescriptive requirements, and broad data access) and avoiding new costs, mandatory reporting, or disclosure that would burden states, localities, tribes, or private firms — particularly given the limited funding the bill authorizes.
The bill aims to create a usable national dataset but relies heavily on voluntary state submissions and a relatively small authorization. Voluntary reporting will limit completeness and comparability unless EPA can incentivize participation or supplement gaps via contracting, but the funding authorized ($4M/year for five years) is likely insufficient to build and sustain an ongoing national data infrastructure without additional appropriations or partners.
That creates a risk that the inventory and rate estimates will be partial or uneven across regions.
The statute requires granular end‑market sales data (dollars per ton, domestic and international) and also protects confidential business information via FOIA Exemption 4. Those two aims pull in opposite directions: companies may withhold commercially sensitive price or contract data, constraining the usefulness of the end‑market reports.
Separately, defining and measuring ‘‘diversion from a circular market’’ presents methodological challenges — tracing where a bale or compost product actually ends up across domestic and global value chains is complex and likely to produce contested estimates. Finally, the unfunded‑mandate bar limits EPA’s ability to require state/local action, which avoids imposing costs but could also reduce data quality and blunt the statute’s intended national coherence.
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