Editorial: California’s plastic bag ban accidentally created another waste problem. Let’s fix it now
California banned single-use plastic grocery bags in 2016, becoming the first state to take this major environmental step. In the eight years it has been in effect, billions of flimsy plastic bags were removed from the waste stream, and several other states were inspired to adopt similar bans.
But it’s not quite the environmental win it may seem. While the ban eliminated one ubiquitous source of plastic waste, it inadvertently opened the door for an even more pernicious one — those thicker convenience totes for sale at the checkout that were designed to be reused and recycled. News flash: They aren’t being reused in any meaningful way, and they can’t be recycled. Indeed, the total amount of trash from plastic bags that California sends to landfills has never been higher. This can’t go on.
The state’s latest recycling failures are unfortunate but not shocking. The petrochemical industry has a long history of outsmarting regulation.
We need a do-over — a second plastic bag ban that fulfills the promise that lawmakers made in 2014 by passing Senate Bill 270, and that voters embraced two years later when they rejected an industry-led ballot measure to overturn it.
No one is to blame for this bad situation. No loopholes were exploited, there were no shady moves. It is simply a case of unintended consequences. In a concession to convenience, the 2014 law allowed retailers to provide more durable “reusable” and recyclable bags for sale at the checkout for at least 10 cents each. It seemed reasonable at the time. Many retailers had already been selling reusable bags.
None of the people negotiating SB 270 (by then-state Sen. Alex Padilla) imagined those replacement bags — more than four times thicker than their flimsy precursors and designed to be reused at least 125 times — would end up being treated as disposable. But that is what happened. Retailers handed them out like candy, and consumers couldn’t have recycled them even if they wanted to. No recycling facility in the state accepts these bags.
The average American throws out three times more trash today than in 1960, and what we squander is killing us. But we can choose differently.
And then the pandemic made everything worse. The plastic bag ban was suspended by the governor, and grocers told shoppers to leave their reusable totes at home for fear they might harbor the virus. Using data from CalRecycle, CALPIRG, the consumer advocacy group, calculated that in 2014 California tossed about 157,385 tons of plastic bag waste into the trash. In 2022, plastic bags accounted for about 231,072 tons of trash. That’s nearly 50% more.
This is easily fixable, however. There are two identical bills moving through the Legislature — Assembly Bill 2236 and Senate Bill 1053 — that would ban all plastic bags from grocery store checkouts beginning in 2026. At that point, only paper bags made of at least 50% recycled materials would be allowed for packing up groceries — as well as the truly reusable bags that shoppers bring with them.
Environmentalists and industry representatives have hammered out a deal for the most significant single-use plastic legislation in the nation. But it has only a week to pass both houses of the state Legislature.
The bills also would extend to grocery delivery services, such as Instacart and DoorDash, which weren’t much of a thing a decade ago. Unfortunately, the same exemptions in the original bill are in the new ones as well — including farmers markets, restaurants and some retail stores. That was a missed opportunity to cut even more plastic bags from the waste stream, and we hope lawmakers will eliminate those exemptions soon.
This legislation is supported by the California Grocers Association, which wouldn’t champion something that wasn’t going to work for its customers. People will adapt. In fact, Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods long ago dumped plastic bags in favor of paper bags, and shoppers are already accustomed to it.
There is one group that is not a fan of another plastic bag ban, and that’s the plastic industry. Companies that manufacture and sell single-use plastic products such as bags and bottles have gotten obscenely rich at the expense of the public, which must pay to clean up plastic waste and deal with the environmental damage it creates.
Of course, grocery bag bans won’t alone solve the global plastic trash problem. That will take a concerted effort to eliminate disposable plastic packaging in every state and nation. California has already taken a step in that direction by passing Senate Bill 54 two years ago, which by 2032 will phase out most plastic found today on grocery store shelves. As for plastic bags, we can and should deal with them sooner.
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