Some plastic bag companies selling products in California will have to prove their bags are recyclable or face enforcement actions, state Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Nov. 2.
However, most are not as advertised, Bonta said.
“Most Californians are under the impression that plastic bags are recyclable,” Bonta said in a release. “But astonishingly, there’s a good chance that most, if not all, these bags are not actually recyclable in California.”
Bonta’s office sent letters to seven plastic bag manufacturers asking them to prove that their reusable bags in California are recyclable.
One such company, Papier-Mettler, based in Germany, told The Epoch Times it was looking into the matter.
“The relevant parties in Germany are looking into this matter and we will come back to you with a response once we have had the chance to fully review the information received from the AG’s office,” a spokesperson for the company told The Epoch Times.
China stopped taking recyclables in 2017, creating a glut of materials globally. California did not have enough infrastructure to compensate for that, Sanborn said.
“Now we’re in a place where there were landfills that are taking some of the stuff that used to get recycled and it had no home anymore,” she said.
Even before China’s action, California officials discovered many items sent to the country were not being recycled properly, she said.
Bonta’s office is fighting plastic pollution by going after companies that produce these products.
In April, Bonta said he announced an investigation into fossil fuels and petrochemical industries for their role in causing and exacerbating the global crisis.
“Instead of addressing this problem, the plastics industry has engaged in an aggressive—and deceptive—marketing and advertising campaign to convince the public that they can recycle their way out of the plastic waste problem,” Bonta said. “The truth is the vast majority of plastic products, by design, cannot be recycled.”
The rate of plastic recycling in the nation is about 6 percent. The remaining 94 percent ends up in landfills, is incinerated or released to the environment, Bonta said.
The vast majority of curbside recycling programs in the state do not have the infrastructure or markets to recycle plastic bags, according to Bonta.
As a result, when bags are put into curbside bins and processed with recyclable waste, it shuts down equipment and increases the risk that workers will be injured, he said.
The Last Beach Cleanup, a California-based group seeking to stop illegal sales of plastic bags in the state, has filed several lawsuits against retailers to end misleading and allegedly unlawful marketing of recyclable bags.
The group sued supermarket companies Gelson’s, Stater Brothers, and Walgreens in 2022, alleging they are illegally selling plastic shopping bags in California.
Jan Dell, a chemical engineer and founder of the group, has become an outspoken critic of what she calls “the great store drop-off charade,” a marketing plan that directs shoppers to return packaging to in-store collection bins that are supposed to be recycled. The bags, however, end up in landfills, he said,
The attorney general’s push to investigate illegal sales of plastic bags in California means the state agrees that plastic bags and films are not recyclable, Dell told The Epoch Times.
“There are already existing laws preventing plastic bag sales and prohibiting false advertising on products which should be stopping Amazon pouches and thousands of other products from using the false ‘Store Dropoff’ label,” Dell told The Epoch Times.
Several groups joined in writing a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom and Bonta in February urging them to enforce the state’s laws on plastic bags and films. The groups called for the state to eliminate recycling symbols on plastic bags and films sold in the state and urged officials to instruct retail stores to stop selling thicker plastic bags because they were not recyclable.
