Does California ban plastic bags?
In the past, California has distributed more than 30 billion single-use plastic takeout bags every year. Back in 2014, California was the first state to enact a ban on single-use plastic bags.
California enacted Senate Bill 270 in 2014, which aims to reduce plastic waste by the "3 R's", Reduce plastic bag use, reuse plastic bags, recycle and recycle plastic bags after use. This is known as California's plastic bag ban. The ban met with considerable resistance, with lobbying campaigns being held by plastic bag manufacturers, but it eventually went into effect in November 2016.
The bill, which primarily targets grocery stores, requires grocery stores to no longer provide thin HDPE plastic bags for free, so the stores began offering heavier bags for 5 cents to buy and then selling them for at least twice that amount, allowing the stores to create a new source of profit.
The law also requires that these HDPE bags be "recyclable" and marked with the "Recycle Triangle" symbol. However, the EPA requires that these bags be taken to a specialized recycling facility. Grocery stores are required to take responsibility for recycling, and many large grocery retailers have contracted with recycling companies for plastic bag recycling bins.
In reality? Plastic bags are not being recycled on a large scale in California. A reporter's investigation found that municipalities and city recycling centers across California could not find one that recycles HDPE plastic bags. This is because the plastic bags have to be manually removed from the machines and then these bags are thrown into landfills.
If not removed manually, they wrap around the idlers and pulleys of the conveyor belts, jam the bed knives in the shredder, become entangled with the shafts of the disc screens, and disrupt the parallel blades of the ballistic separators.
You're at any landfill in California and you'll see these huge fences, 20-foot, 30-foot fences. These fences are not there to keep you out of the landfill, they're there to keep the plastic bags in.
This law took a big hit in 2020.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom suspended the state's ban on single-use plastic bags in grocery stores for 60 days out of concern over new crown pneumonia.
Eventually, the cost of the bags comes back. Today, most grocery shoppers get brand new HDPE bags every time. And, reusable logo plastic bags have disappeared from stores.
A recent ABC News investigation placed Apple Airtag trackers in dozens of such garbage cans across the country, including two Targets and a Walmart in San Diego County. Of the three trackers in San Diego, two landed in landfills and the other never left the store. Of the 46 trackers deployed nationwide, four ended up in facilities that recycle plastic bags.
Another environmental nonprofit, Last Beach Cleanup, deployed 15 of its own trackers in store plastic bag drop boxes throughout Southern California: 11 went to landfills or transfer stations, one went to an incinerator, one was in the Port of Los Angeles, which could mean it's headed to Asia, and two ended up in Mexico, possibly also on its way to Asia. 1 ended up in Mexico, possibly also en route to Asia. None went to a recycling facility.
California's Statewide Recycling Markets and Curbside Recycling Committee released a report in December 2021 formally recommending that retailers and product manufacturers remove "recyclable" and "recyclables" and the recycling symbol from HDPE plastic bags, stating, in part wrote, "No store in California has a comprehensive recycling system."
There are single-digit specialized commercial facilities in California that have the ability to recycle PE plastic film, which includes HDPE grocery bags, as well as plastic packaging in shipping pallets and produce bags. It is unclear whether any of these facilities receive used plastic shopping bags for recycling, or if they do, whether they recycle them. Californians now produce more plastic bag waste per capita than before the ban. The "reusable" plastic bags we get from stores have actually become disposable.
