“Paper or plastic?” Your days are numbered.
The query that thousands and thousands of consumers have heard for years once they roll as much as the checkout aisle at grocery shops will quickly be a factor of the previous.
On Friday, California Legal professional Normal Rob Bonta introduced a authorized settlement with 4 main plastic bag manufacturing corporations, who agreed to cease promoting the baggage in California.
Bonta had charged that the businesses had been violating a California regulation — first signed by former Gov. Jerry Brown in 2014 after which reaffirmed after an trade problem by voters in a statewide poll measure, Proposition 67, in 2016. That regulation banned the flimsy single-use luggage at supermarkets and retail shops as a technique to scale back litter and ocean air pollution. It allowed an exception, nonetheless, for thicker plastic luggage so long as they had been “reusable” or recyclable. Bonta mentioned Friday that the thicker luggage are literally not recyclable in California, and the businesses had been knowingly breaking the regulation by promoting them.
“Billions of plastic carryout bags end up in landfills, incinerators, and the environment instead of being recycled as the bags proclaim,” Bonta mentioned. “Our legal actions today make it clear: No corporation is above the law.”
For consumers, the settlement was largely moot, nonetheless.
Some retailer chains, together with Complete Meals and Dealer Joe’s, already present solely paper luggage on the checkout counter. All shops permit consumers to convey their very own reusable luggage.
That regulation, SB 1053, by Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas, got here after investigations confirmed the thicker plastic luggage weren’t being recycled, as their producers claimed.
Though the baggage had been on the best way out in lower than three months anyway, environmental teams mentioned Friday they had been happy with Bonta’s settlement.
“It doesn’t make sense for something you use for minutes to last for centuries,” mentioned Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for Californians Towards Waste, a non-profit group primarily based in Sacramento. “Plastic bags end up in the environment. They are eaten by marine mammals. They cause litter. They are so lightweight they float out of garbage trucks.”
Below Friday’s announcement, 4 plastic bag producers, Revolution Sustainable Options LLC, Metro Poly Corp., PreZero US Packaging LLC, and Advance Polybag, Inc., agreed to cease promoting the thicker plastic luggage in California, and agreed to collectively pay $1.7 million in penalties to the state.
Three different giant plastic bag makers didn’t settle. On Friday, Bonta sued them. The lawsuit alleges that Novolex Holdings LLC, Inteplast Group Corp., and Mettler Packaging LLC violated state regulation.
After being subpoenaed by Bonta’s workplace, the lawsuit notes, the businesses had been unable to supply any paperwork displaying how lots of the plastic luggage they make are recycled at their very own amenities; or to supply any proof that recycling amenities in California recycle plastic luggage, together with amenities the businesses recognized as these they consider recycle their luggage. Nor might they determine the share of plastic luggage they bought to shops in California that had been recycled.
The lawyer common’s workplace surveyed 69 waste processing and recycling amenities as a part of the investigation. Solely two claimed to simply accept plastic luggage, Bonta mentioned. However even they might not verify the baggage had been truly recycled.
“These bags are not recyclable at any meaningful scale anywhere in California,” he mentioned. “The only thing being recycled are the false claims of the manufacturers.”
After Jan. 1, there’ll nonetheless be some plastic luggage left. They’re allowed beneath state regulation in retail shops that don’t promote meals. And really skinny luggage — typically introduced in giant rolls that consumers tear off — are nonetheless authorized to be used in supermarkets for produce and meat.
Republicans and a few retail and grocery trade associations have referred to as the assorted plastic bag legal guidelines overkill and the newest instance of California behaving like a “nanny state.”
“There are too many mandates on what people can and can’t do,” mentioned Meeting Republican Chief James Gallagher, R-Chico, final yr after the Legislature handed the ban on the thicker plastic luggage. “What kind of car they can drive, things like that. I don’t see there’s a big need for it. Let people make the decisions they want to make.”
Environmental teams and coastal advocates say the legal guidelines are serving to scale back litter and hurt to fish, birds, marine mammals, and different wildlife, which may eat the plastic, or develop into entangled in it and die.
In 2009, plastic grocery luggage made up 8.7% of the items of litter present in California by volunteers through the annual Coastal Cleanup Day. Final yr, they totaled simply 1.6%.
“If anyone ever tells you plastic bag bans don’t work this proves them wrong,” mentioned Eben Schwartz, marine particles program supervisor on the California Coastal Fee. “It’s a huge success story. There has been a steady drop.”
Initially Printed: October 17, 2025 at 11:42 AM PDT
