GreenBlue

In October 2025, the attorneys general of Florida, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, and Texas sent letters to GreenBlue asserting that its packaging standards activities may violate state and federal antitrust and consumer protection laws. ⁴

Background

GreenBlue was founded in 2002 by American architect William McDonough and German chemist Michael Braungart to organize industry groups around the environmentalist “cradle to cradle” product design method. The method emphasizes material sourcing, material health, material reutilization, and left-wing identity politics considerations in the manufacturing process. McDonough and Braungart expounded the core tenets of cradle to cradle in their 2002 book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. The “cradle to cradle” phrase was later trademarked by McDonough’s materials firm and consulting group, McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC), and a design standard was created to promote McDonough’s preferred practices. ^{5 6}

McDonough originally founded GreenBlue to help ensure that the cradle-to-cradle method would be publicly available and free to companies. However, after failing to secure a stable revenue stream for GreenBlue, McDonough eventually stepped down as chairman and later entered into a lengthy and costly legal dispute with GreenBlue over the group’s ability to use the phrase “cradle to cradle” in its materials. ⁷

McDonough’s firm, MBDC, demanded that GreenBlue license the term, placing a financial burden on the organization. By approximately 2010, GreenBlue was compelled to drop the phrase from its materials entirely, instead using terms such as “green chemistry” and “closed-loop material systems.” ⁷

Activities

Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC)

The Sustainable Packaging Coalition is a project of GreenBlue that works to pressure companies to adopt environmentalist supply chain standards. ⁸ Members of the SPC include 3M, Amazon, Chick-fil-A, Intel, McDonald’s, Procter and Gamble, Sephora, Starbucks, and Target. A number of state and local government agencies are members, as are some federal agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Postal Service. ⁹

The SPC holds annual conferences, including the flagship “SPC Impact” event and the smaller “SPC Advance” event, through which it convenes brand owners, manufacturers, and recyclers around packaging recycling and materials standards. In 2024, SPC Impact drew speakers focused on carbon emissions reduction and packaging innovation. In 2025, GreenBlue executive director Paul Nowak announced the Packaging Recyclability Advancement Task Force at SPC Impact, a collaboration with the U.S. Plastics Pact, the Recycling Partnership, and other organizations to address recyclability barriers for specific plastic packaging formats. ^{10 11}

In the wake of China’s 2018 decision to restrict what materials it would accept for recycling, the Sustainable Packaging Coalition responded and said the restrictions put “our system out of balance” and that “it will take investment to build better [recycling] infrastructure” in the United States. ¹² A representative of GreenBlue also responded and said that it will take “new policies that inspire businesses to invest” to make this possible. ¹³

In 2017, the Sustainable Packaging Coalition published a research paper which examined the impact of composting at a number of locations including a quick service restaurant and a national grocery chain. Their research showed that recyclables and food scraps accounted for most of the waste generated by these venues and that only a small portion of waste went to a landfill. ¹⁴

How2Recycle

How2Recycle is a project of GreenBlue that works to standardize recycling labels on products to tell consumers exactly how to recycle each part of the packaging. ¹⁵ How2Recycle works with companies to create custom labels for their packaging. ^{16 16} Launched in 2012 as an SPC working group, How2Recycle had grown to more than 800 participating organizations as of 2025, with over 75,000 labels issued. The program underwent a major rebranding in 2025, rolling out redesigned “How2Recycle Pro” labels with a transition period ending in February 2026. The updated label design was partly driven by California’s SB 343 recyclability labeling law, which restricts the use of recycling symbols on packaging and was set to take effect in October 2026. ^{17 18}

An article published in the left-of-center online outlet The Intercept in 2019 titled “Waste Only: How the Plastics Industry Is Fighting to Keep Polluting the World” alleged that How2Recycle “makes some plastic products seem fair easier to recycle than they are,” and claimed that because the How2Recycle symbol is affixed to several commercial products, it is “all but impossible for many consumers to recycle.” ¹⁹

Composting Collaborative

The Composting Collaborative is a composting initiative that seeks to influence businesses and localities to adopt GreenBlue’s preferred industry standards and municipal ordinances. ²⁰ Members of the Composting Collaborative include businesses that handle large amounts of compostable material, nonprofits, and municipalities. ¹⁶

Recycled Material Standard

The Recycled Material Standard (RMS) is a GreenBlue certification program for brands and suppliers to substantiate and communicate the use of recycled materials in their products. The standard requires third-party certification to validate recycled-content claims. ²¹

CleanGredients

CleanGredients is a GreenBlue database tool designed to assist formulators in identifying ingredients for cleaning products that meet so-called green chemistry, or environmentalist materials safety, criteria. ²¹

Criticism

State Antitrust Letter

On October 29, 2025, the attorneys general of Florida, Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, and Montana jointly issued letters to GreenBlue, the Consumer Goods Forum, and the U.S. Plastics Pact, asserting that the groups’ plastics recycling and packaging standards activities may violate state and federal antitrust and consumer protection laws. The letters focused on the groups’ setting of targets and standards for recyclable packaging materials, private circular-economy initiatives, and coordinated stakeholder engagement, arguing such activities could artificially inflate prices. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) stated that the organizations’ policies were suspected of “hindering states’ economic prosperity by coordinating business behavior.” ^{4 22}

In February 2026, a coalition of ten state attorneys general, led by Florida, issued warning letters to nearly 80 corporations associated with the U.S. Plastics Pact, the Consumer Goods Forum, and GreenBlue’s Sustainable Packaging Coalition, characterizing the companies’ adoption of those organizations’ packaging policies as “coordinated practices” that could reduce competition and mislead consumers. ²³