Produce bags on the way out
New law makes state 1st in nation to ban single-use plastic receptacles in grocery stores, starting in 2025
Those ubiquitous rolls of thin plastic bags, often used only once to hold fruit and vegetables or to put around packages of meat. will soon be a memory at grocery stores.
Under a bill signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom late last week, California will become the first state in the nation to phase out single-use plastic produce bags in supermarkets. The bags, called “pre-checkout bags” in grocery store lingo, must be replaced no later than Jan. 1, 2025, with recycled paper bags, or bags made of compostable plastic.
“This kind of plastic film is not recyclable. It's a contaminant in almost any bin you put it into,” said Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for Californians Against Waste, an environmental group that supported the bill.
“It flies around landfills and flies out of trucks. It gets stuck on gears at recycling facilities. And it contaminates compost. It's a problematic product we want to get rid of.”
Senate Bill 1046, written by Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman, DStockton, passed the Legislature on a party-line vote, with most Democrats voting for it and most Republicans voting against it.
The main opponent was the California Grocers Association. Nick Rose, a spokesman for the association, said Tuesday he had no comment on why the group opposed the bill.
But in a letter the grocer's association wrote to Eggman in April, the group asked for supermarkets to be given until 2025, rather than 2023, to phase in the new compostable bags so that manufacturers would have more time to ramp up. Eggman granted that delay, but did not grant the group's request for the bill to include a ban on local cities putting in place similar rules or fines for stores using single-use plastic produce bags.
“They play a pivotal role in protecting consumers from possible contamination and food illnesses that result from raw packaged meats touching other products,” wrote Leticia Garcia, director of state government relations for California Grocers Association in the April letter. “These bags also provide an additional layer of protection when breakables, like wine bottles, are placed in grocery bags with other products.”
Some grocery stores already are using compostable produce bags. Trader Joe's put them in all of its stores in 2019 as part of an effort to reduce plastic, foam containers and other packaging.
“We're not banning the bags,” Lapis said. “We are just requiring a more-sustainable type of bags. You'll still have a place to put your fruits and vegetables that won't leak.”
Six years ago, following a major battle between the plastics industry and environmental groups, California voters approved a statewide ballot measure, Proposition 67, to ban single-use plastic bags at grocery stores' checkout lines.
Part of the argument by supporters then was that billions of the bags are produced using oil, which causes pollution and greenhouse gases. Many end up as roadside litter, or trash at the beach and ocean, where they can entangle and kill animals that ingest them.
After dozens of California cities, then the state, banned the bags, their frequency as litter fell.
From 2010 to 2019, the number of plastic bags picked up at beaches, creeks and lakes by volunteers at California's annual Coastal Cleanup Day dropped 61%, from 65,736 to 25,768.
As a result of the ballot measure, most grocery shoppers in California now either use paper bags from the store, bring their own reusable bags, or at some stores are given the option of thicker plastic checkout bags. Through a loophole in the law, those are still allowed because they are classified as reusable, and not “single use.”
But tens of millions of the singleuse plastic produce bags still remain in the stores.
The latest push to phase them out was driven by a new state composting law. That law, signed in 2016 by former Gov. Jerry Brown, requires the state to reduce organic waste disposal at landfills by 75% by 2025. It has led cities across California to provide composting bins for food waste to residents. The goal is to preserve landfill space and reduce methane emissions from landfills, which worsen climate change.