“Paper or plastic?” Your days are numbered.
The question that millions of shoppers have heard for years when they go to the supermarket checkout will soon be a thing of the past.
On Friday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a legal settlement with four major plastic bag manufacturing companies, which agreed to stop selling the bags in California.
Bonta had accused the companies of violating a California law — first signed by former Gov. Jerry Brown in 2014 and then reaffirmed after an industry challenge by voters in a statewide ballot measure, Proposition 67, in 2016. That law banned the thin, disposable bags in grocery stores and stores as a way to reduce litter and ocean pollution. However, an exception was allowed for thicker plastic bags, as long as they were ‘reusable’ or recyclable. Bonta said Friday that the thicker bags in California are not actually recyclable, and that the companies are knowingly breaking the law by selling them.
“Billions of plastic carrier bags end up in landfills, incinerators and the environment, instead of being recycled as the bags claim,” Bonta said. “Our legal actions today make it clear: no company is above the law.”
For shoppers, however, the settlement was largely moot.
Some retail chains, including Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, already offer only paper bags at the checkout. Customers can bring their own reusable bags in all stores.
And under a law signed last year by Governor Gavin Newsom, the thicker plastic bags were to be phased out in all California supermarkets and stores, effective January 1, 2026.
That bill, SB 1053, from Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas, came after research found that the thicker plastic bags were not being recycled as manufacturers claimed.
A 2023 ABC News investigation found that when journalists applied electronic tracking tags to 46 bundles of plastic bags left in recycling bins at WalMart and Target stores across the country, only four ended up at recycling centers. Half went to landfills and waste incinerators, seven stopped pinging at transfer stations that do not recycle or sort plastic bags, six last pinged at the store where they were delivered, and three ended up in Indonesia and Malaysia.
Although the bags were on their way within three months anyway, environmental groups said Friday they were satisfied with Bonta’s settlement.
“It doesn’t make sense for something you use for minutes to last for centuries,” said Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for Californians Against Waste, a nonprofit organization based in Sacramento. “Plastic bags end up in the environment. They are eaten by marine mammals. They cause litter. They are so light that they float out of garbage trucks.”
Under Friday’s announcement, four plastic bag makers, Revolution Sustainable Solutions LLC, Metro Poly Corp., PreZero US Packaging LLC and Advance Polybag, Inc., agreed to stop selling the thicker plastic bags in California and agreed to collectively pay $1.7 million in fines to the state.
Three other major plastic bag manufacturers did not agree. On Friday, Bonta sued them. The lawsuit claims that Novolex Holdings LLC, Inteplast Group Corp. and Mettler Packaging LLC violated state law.
After being subpoenaed by Bonta’s office, the lawsuit alleges, the companies failed to provide documents showing how many of the plastic bags they make are recycled in their own facilities; or to provide any evidence that recycling facilities in California recycle plastic bags, including facilities that the companies have identified as believing they recycle their bags. They also couldn’t determine what percentage of plastic bags they sold to stores in California that were recycled.
The attorney general’s office investigated 69 waste treatment and recycling facilities as part of the investigation. Only two claimed to accept plastic bags, Bonta said. But even they couldn’t confirm that the bags were actually recycled.
“These bags are not recyclable on any meaningful scale anywhere in California,” he said. “The only thing being recycled are the manufacturers’ false claims.”
After January 1, there will still be a few plastic bags left. State law allows them in stores that do not sell food. And very thin bags – often presented in large rolls that shoppers tear off – are still legal for use in fruit and vegetable supermarkets.
But those bags, according to another law Newsom signed in 2022, must be made of compostable plastic.
Republicans and some retail and grocery industry associations have called the various plastic bag laws excessive and the latest example of California acting like a “nanny state.”
“There are too many mandates about what people can and cannot do,” Republican Leader James Gallagher, R-Chico, said last year after the Legislature passed the ban on the thicker plastic bags. “What kind of car they can drive, things like that. I don’t see a big need for that. Let people make the decisions they want to make.”
Environmental groups and coastal advocates say the laws will help reduce litter and harm to fish, birds, marine mammals and other wildlife, which can eat the plastic or become entangled in it and die.
In 2009, plastic grocery bags made up 8.7% of the litter found by volunteers in California during the annual Coastal Cleanup Day. Last year they totaled just 1.6%.
“If anyone ever tells you that the plastic bag ban isn’t working, it proves them wrong,” said Eben Schwartz, marine debris program manager at the California Coastal Commission. “It’s a huge success story. There has been a steady decline.”
Originally published:
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