California Legislature Passes Bill Banning Thick Single-Use Plastic Bags
Press release from Oceana:
[Yesterday], California state lawmakers passed Senate Bill 1053, which bans thick single-use plastic film bags from grocery and convenience store checkouts across the state. Senator Catherine Blakespear (D-Encinitas) and Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan (D-Orinda) championed this legislative effort. The bill now goes to Governor Newsom’s desk to sign into law before September 30. If signed, the bill would go into effect on January 1, 2026.
Ten years ago, California adopted the first statewide bag ban in the country with the passage of Senate Bill 270, but the law did not eliminate thicker plastic film bags at grocery and convenience stores. Since 2016, more plastic bags (by weight) have been thrown away compared to before the state’s bag ban was implemented. A study conducted by CalRecycle found an estimated around 460,000 lbs. of single-use plastic bags in California’s municipal waste in 2021.
“California’s move to ban thick single-use plastic bags at grocery store checkouts is a win for our coasts and communities,” said Christy Leavitt, Oceana’s plastics campaign director. “Plastic bags are one of the deadliest types of plastic to ocean wildlife. Not only is plastic tarnishing California’s beaches, but it’s in our food, air, water, and even our bodies. With an ocean-based economy valued at $45 billion annually, California is dependent on a clean coast. California has been a leader in tackling the plastic pollution crisis and strengthening the state’s plastic bag ban is another important step forward. Governor Newsom should swiftly sign this bill into law, and the state legislature should continue to act on plastic.”
A statewide poll released by Oceana revealed that 86% of California voters support local and state policies that reduce single-use plastic, and 92% of California voters are concerned about single-use plastic products like grocery bags, beverage bottles, and takeout food containers.
Background
Plastic has been found in every corner of the world and has turned up in drinking water, beer, salt, honey, and more. It’s also one of the greatest contributors to climate change. In fact, if plastic were a country, it would be the fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. With plastic production growing at a rapid rate, increased amounts of plastic can be expected to flood our blue planet with devastating consequences.
A 2020 Oceana report revealed evidence of nearly 1,800 animals from 40 different species swallowing or becoming entangled in plastic in U.S. waters between 2009 and early 2020. Of those animals, a staggering 88% were from species listed as endangered or threatened with extinction under the Endangered Species Act.
Less than 6% of plastic in the U.S. is recycled, yet the plastics industry continues to tout recycling as a panacea while pushing new plastic products onto the market. Companies need to dramatically reduce the production and use of unnecessary single-use plastic, provide plastic-free choices, and develop systems that refill and reuse packaging and foodware. Elected officials must enact policies to ensure they do so.
In July 2024, Oceana released the results of a nationwide poll of American voters that showed broad bipartisan support for reducing single-use plastics and increasing the use of reusable packaging and foodware. Polling was conducted by the nonpartisan polling company Ipsos, which surveyed 1,053 registered U.S. voters from June 28 to 30, 2024. Included among the key findings:
- 3 in 4 American voters support national, state, and local policies that reduce single-use plastic.
- 84% support increasing the use of reusable packaging and food ware.
- 87% support policies to protect our rivers, lakes, and oceans from plastic pellet pollution.
To learn more about Oceana’s campaign to stop plastic pollution, please visit usa.oceana.org/plastics.
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It’s nice to read about the priorities of our hard-working legislators.
If they really wanted to do something for the environment they’d ban styrofoam packaging.
Also.
They both need to go.
But the California Legislature has this magic way of piling on regulations that end up making problems worse. Homelessness, drug addiction, crime, etc. Why? Because they insist on throwing money at the problem while being unwilling to address that ordinary Californians, while vocally self righteous, are also just as full of selfishness as any other population. They go for the money just as fast as those they deride. And justify their own greed by complaining about the wealthy or Republicans or police. Always as if someone else being greedy exempts worrying about their own greed.
A day ago someone wrote that government agencies spent too much effort demanding regulations to prevent fraud when people like her had unmet needs. Yeah, right. As if “GAO looked at a recent 5-year period and is estimating annual losses from fraud to be between $233 and $521 billion dollars. ”
https://www.gao.gov/podcast/our-first-kind-estimate-fraud-federal-government
It actually because of a lack of grass roots oversight. Our population works too much to be informed and involved in politics, so our politicians are bought and paid for by lobbyist, who tailor regulations as they see fit.
Umm… this is an article about plastic bags.
Meandering diatribes about dissociated vexations is what the Jail Reports is for.
That some people refuse to see the connections IS the problem with plastic bag legislation. As you just gave an example. Poor aim in legislation is just like poor aim in comments- it’s both unnecessary and counterproductive if self satisfying.
That’s the problem with the government, they are unable to multi task, Force Surfrider to donate @00% of their profits to focusing on protecting our ocean from Big Green Energy. This while saving heavy plastic bags for the deplorables lunch carriers. It’s the least our greedy bureaucrats could do to save a few bucks for the poor. The Delaware Lunchbox Flounder flopping around on some random beach agrees with this message.
Red herring
Don’t you just love those little packing peanuts.
It’s not just hard work that’s the problem with the California Legislature. It’s the level of incompetence combined with arrogance and penalty. When they passed the plastic bag ban rom Prop 67, they blithely decided that, if they demanded recycled , thicker plastic bags, they were “reusable.” Did they ask whether recyclers could recycle them? No because apparently the bags gum up the grinders so these bags end up in landfills no matter what.
Reading this press release you’d never think the legislature actually encouraged these phantom recyclable plastic bags by excepting them from the ban and allowing stores to charge for them. Oh well. A regulation that doesn’t actually make anyone unhappy is a politician’s dream. All the good feels, none of the pain.
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2023-08-24/whats-the-deal-with-single-use-plastic-bag-bans
That’s venality, not penalty…
This should be one of many priorities.
When legislation does not work, bureaucrats spend more money doing more of the same, expecting a different result.
Never mind that that California contributes very little plastic to the ocean…
At least a quarter of grocery bags did according to this-
“After a 35-year career as a chemical engineer observing firsthand the global impacts of plastic waste, she launched the Last Beach Cleanup, a nonprofit environmental organization. She deployed 15 trackers of her own in store drop-off bins around Southern California. Eleven went to landfills or waste transfer stations. One went to a trash incinerator. Another last pinged at the Port of Los Angeles, which she said likely means it was headed to Asia. Two more wound up in Mexico, possibly also en route to Asia. None went to recycling facility.”
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2023-08-24/whats-the-deal-with-single-use-plastic-bag-bans
Here ya go
Colombo is right, if he is saying that all those items should not come in plastic bags.
Imagine if business taxes where levied on recyclability. Make a product easy to recycle? Pay less tax. Import an environmentally unsound product? Pay more. Empirically evaluated. No attempt by the legislature to make the decisions.
It would be an incentive for capital investment in both product design for recycling and actual recycling. Automate credit in the process. No defective politician judgement required. Let the chips fall where they may. Money is a great incentive for funding solutions as long as the politicians are prevented from micromanging with their own finances being a proority.
Here locally, the local city and county government are a roadblock for recycling. The board of directors of HWMA are literally employees of the largest cities and towns plus the country. They contract with various trash pickup operators but their agenda seems to be to minimize the expense to government for trash while making it difficult for individuals to be responsible.
https://www.hwma.net/board-of-directors
It is not the same, it is attempting to correct the shortcomings of the initial law. And shouldn’t the goal be to contribute no plastic to the ocean?
Who thought these were single use bags ??
These mobile Target, CVC, and Kmart heavy plastic bags can last years as a lunchbox. So again, the nimrods ban them for thin plastic bags which will disintegrate after two uses and end up flying out of the garbage truck as it trundles down the 101. Hundreds of thousands more tons of micro plastic trash added to the Pacific garbage patch. And these idiots want to put windmills up off Humboldt. Gee, what could go wrong? Dodo birds.. If it ain’t broke, fix it until it is. And then go extinct. Natural selections finest hour. Go figure.
Oh yeah because they are so commonly being used as lunch boxes. The thick bags are not being banned in favor of thin bags.
Even if a plastic bag lasts a year as a lunchbox, it will go on to last for 100 -1000 years before completely breaking down into microplastics, which are still very harmful.
Paper anyone?
I take a Chico bag with me for in case, and about a dozen cotton tote bags I’ve accumulated over the years for shopping trips. Even those multi-use plastic bags fold up surprisingly small, but evidently remembering to bring a bag with you is too hard for many.
Someone is making alot of money from these bags.
And are going to make even more money out of paper bags !
Here are the political parties of the California politicians who received donations from plastics companies lobbying against the plastic bag ban:
These politicians were involved in the legislative process during the period when the plastic bag ban and related regulations were debated. Their party affiliations indicate that most of the recipients of these donations were Democrats, except for Mimi Walters, who is a Republican
That group seems to be entrenched pretty deep. We might have to shorten the term limits. Most Sacramento lawmakers need to pack their bags and move on to a real job where they won’t pedal influence/grease the skids/bribe/or swindle our rights away.
The problem isn’t really one of legislation, that’s simply a tool try to force a change in consumer behavior by targeting merchants.
The real problem is 80 years of disposable consumerism where price is the priority, not quality, not sustainability, not durability. That’s going to be a humongous task to alter. It requires a fundamental shift in philosophy from a large proportion of consumers and the businesses that provide goods. Something I don’t see happening on a broad scale so instead we get these attempts at legislative fixes that only seem to piss people off.
If it’s made financially better or easier, it will happen automatically. It takes no consumerism revolution to do it. People will do what is made easy and/or cheap. That is within the realm of legislation if the legal and legislature system opposition, funded by lobbyists, can not be used as a lever to frustrate it. Basically the government, especially the California government, needs to stop tilting at social windmills and be a lot more practical.
We’ve been told for 80 years that price to the consumer is the only thing that matters, something you apparently buy. That’s the fundamental root of the problem that causes us to continue to produce and consume cheap, disposable items like fast fashion or viral trends that appear and disappear like the wind blowing an empty plastic bag. An entirely different way of thinking about what we buy is required in order to stem the mountains of waste we produce.
Hello? Did I not say the price of goods will sway the consumer? And increasing the cost of unrecyclable goods over recyclable will make recyclable goods more attractive? So yes, I do “buy” the price to the consumer is most important. Just not the bit you seem to mentally insert about that being always the lowest price because it’s cheapest made.
Good luck preaching about a “different way.” Forcing a puritanical standard has never been more effective than an economical one ever in the history of consuming. Fact it has almost always created a backlash that made problems worse. But you keep trying to put those “A’s” on Hester’s chest.
Will Newsom represent his constituents, or the lobbyist who pay him?
Pretty sure he’s not planning on a pay cut.
Maybe if they raised the price of the bags from $0.10 to $2 each people will be more motivated to bring their own bags. Probably not, but it’s worth a try.
Go figure…the privileged white boomer Biden lunchboxers would ban the poor and middle class deplorables lunch sacks. One heavy bag, tended to with care, could last a decade. They need to recycle their IPhone and go back to two tin cans and a string. Ban windmills.