The Albany Gazette - California's Chance: Allow Global Brands and the Plastic Industry Invest in Proof, Not Punishment (NASDAQ: SMX)

The optics were perfect. The outcome, less so. Unless they pay attention to opportunities that exist right here, right now, instead of acting as a purely punitive body.

What the state doesn't seem to realize is that the solution it's seeking already exists, and it isn't another fine. It's proof. It's infrastructure. It's SMX (NASDAQ:SMX), a company that has already built what Los Angeles County and global policymakers keep asking for. It delivers real, molecular-level substance to what decades of summits like COP 29 and the UN Plastics Treaty have only talked about.

For its part, SMX isn't talking; it's offering. Not about a piece of the puzzle, but the entire wish list: measurable traceability, proof that recycled content is genuine, assurance that waste streams are truly closed, and validation that sustainability is more than a talking point on a corporate slide. That's the frustrating part. While the debates drag on year after year in search of solutions, SMX already has them, making it long overdue to choose and implement real technology over recycled rhetoric. It's a straightforward process that lets SMX do the heavy lifting. Here's how it works.

SMX Immutably Marks Plastics at the Resin Stage

SMX's molecular-marker technology embeds invisible, tamper-proof identifiers directly into plastics at the resin stage, before they ever take shape. Every granule of resin carries a unique molecular fingerprint, creating an unbreakable chain of custody from creation to collection to recycling. That's not a proposal. That's a platform. And it's working today.

Thus, instead of forcing companies to pay fines for a lack of proof, California could be funding a system that guarantees it. Rather than punishing progress, it could accelerate it by using the dollars already flowing through its lawsuits to build infrastructure that makes compliance automatic.

Coke and Pepsi aren't the problem. Their intent has always been good, and their investments prove it. Both companies have invested significant resources in recycling innovation, recovery infrastructure, and sustainability initiatives across every major market worldwide. They've built partnerships, funded programs, and pledged real progress. What they're battling isn't a lack of effort. It's a lack of alignment.

Every region, regulator, and recycler speaks a different language when it comes to circularity. Definitions shift. Standards collide. What's compliant in one country gets challenged in another. The result is a global patchwork of rules that reward ambition in one place and punish it in the next.

Coke and Pepsi aren't fighting the science; they're fighting a broken system. There are ways to mend it.

Fund Change, Not Unrelated Programs

Imagine if California redirected its lawsuits into solutions. Each multi-million-dollar settlement could fund real-world traceability infrastructure, smart systems that tag, track, and authenticate every ton of plastic in circulation. It wouldn't just satisfy environmental watchdogs. It would make California the global hub for circular-economy innovation.

And here's where SMX makes that vision profitable. Its blockchain-enabled Plastic Cycle Token (PCT) monetizes verified circularity, transforming proof into a measurable, tradeable asset. This isn't about tracking a single bottle worth pennies. It's about metric tons of authenticated material worth tens of thousands, even millions, when aggregated across global supply chains. Proof becomes liquidity. Circularity becomes an asset class.

That's the system COP 29 and UN Treaty delegates keep describing in theory, a unified, verifiable framework where data meets policy and accountability meets profit. SMX already has it. It's not an idea. It's an implementation.

Regulators Can Stop Chasing and Start Utilizing

The irony is that regulators continue to chase the prospect of solutions instead of utilizing what's already available, proven, and operational. SMX has already demonstrated its capabilities with Continental, marking and tracing 21 tons of natural rubber from tree to tire. The company also has partnerships with A*STAR, REDWAVE, CETI, Tradepro, and others, which demonstrate that molecular tracking is effective at scale for plastics and textiles. The best part is that SMX's platform is applicable to virtually any material or liquid, creating a universal language for recycling and circularity across the industries driving today's environmental headlines.

So why is California still penalizing progress instead of financing it? It makes no sense.

California continues to call for transparency, but it continues to collect opacity. The state's "environmental funds" absorb millions in corporate penalties, yet recycling rates barely move and landfill totals barely shrink. The money goes to bureaucracy, not backbone. Meanwhile, the companies being fined are the ones trying hardest to change.

Stop Litigating and Start Rewarding

Coke and Pepsi don't need more lawsuits. They need measurable systems that demonstrate the effectiveness of their current efforts, and they require regulators willing to reward results instead of publishing discouraging headlines. SMX has that system now. It delivers what global treaties have promised but never implemented: molecular-level accountability that makes sustainability measurable, verifiable, and profitable.

Plastic waste doesn't start in the ocean. It starts in the supply chain. Until regulators start tracing materials at their source, every fine will remain another headline on a broken loop. Stop the madness.

California doesn't need another statement or another lawsuit. It doesn't need another committee or summit to study the same problem. The solution already exists. SMX has built, proven, and deployed it. It's here today, operating at industrial scale, ready to track plastics from resin to recycling and back again.

So here's a timely proposition: instead of drafting the next headline, California should start recognizing the opportunity already in front of it. SMX is the infrastructure the state keeps asking for: built, operating, and ready to deliver. In other words, California, stop searching and start using.

About SMX

As global businesses face new and complex challenges relating to carbon neutrality and meeting new governmental and regional regulations and standards, SMX is able to offer players along the value chain access to its marking, tracking, measuring and digital platform technology to transition more successfully to a low-carbon economy.

Forward-Looking Statements

The information in this press release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding expectations, hopes, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future. In addition, any statements that refer to projections, forecasts or other characterizations of future events or circumstances, including any underlying assumptions, are forward-looking statements. The words "anticipate," "believe," "contemplate," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "intends," "may," "will," "might," "plan," "possible," "potential," "predict," "project," "should," "would" and similar expressions may identify forward-looking statements, but the absence of these words does not mean that a statement is not forward-looking. Forward-looking statements in this press release may include, for example: matters relating to the Company's fight against abusive and possibly illegal trading tactics against the Company's stock; successful launch and implementation of SMX's joint projects with manufacturers and other supply chain participants of gold, steel, rubber and other materials; changes in SMX's strategy, future operations, financial position, estimated revenues and losses, projected costs, prospects and plans; SMX's ability to develop and launch new products and services, including its planned Plastic Cycle Token; SMX's ability to successfully and efficiently integrate future expansion plans and opportunities; SMX's ability to grow its business in a cost-effective manner; SMX's product development timeline and estimated research and development costs; the implementation, market acceptance and success of SMX's business model; developments and projections relating to SMX's competitors and industry; and SMX's approach and goals with respect to technology. These forward-looking statements are based on information available as of the date of this press release, and current expectations, forecasts and assumptions, and involve a number of judgments, risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing views as of any subsequent date, and no obligation is undertaken to update forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date they were made, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws. As a result of a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties, actual results or performance may be materially different from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Some factors that could cause actual results to differ include: the ability to maintain the listing of the Company's shares on Nasdaq; changes in applicable laws or regulations; any lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on SMX's business; the ability to implement business plans, forecasts, and other expectations, and identify and realize additional opportunities; the risk of downturns and the possibility of rapid change in the highly competitive industry in which SMX operates; the risk that SMX and its current and future collaborators are unable to successfully develop and commercialize SMX's products or services, or experience significant delays in doing so; the risk that the Company may never achieve or sustain profitability; the risk that the Company will need to raise additional capital to execute its business plan, which may not be available on acceptable terms or at all; the risk that the Company experiences difficulties in managing its growth and expanding operations; the risk that third-party suppliers and manufacturers are not able to fully and timely meet their obligations; the risk that SMX is unable to secure or protect its intellectual property; the possibility that SMX may be adversely affected by other economic, business, and/or competitive factors; and other risks and uncertainties described in SMX's filings from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

EMAIL: [email protected]

SOURCE: SMX (Security Matters)

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