Four major plastic bag producers will no longer sell their grocery bags in California and will pay fines in a settlement California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Friday. The companies had labeled the bags as recyclable when they actually are not, Bonta said in a press briefing Friday.
State law requires plastic grocery bags be recyclable in the state. Bonta also announced Friday that he had filed a lawsuit against three additional bag producers for the same reason. Consumers may continue to see plastic bags from those additional producers in stores until January, when a new state ban of all plastic bags from grocery stores goes into effect.
“Even when consumers follow the instructions printed on these plastic bags and return the bags to designated recycling bins at stores or other locations, these bags generally end up in landfills or incinerators rather than getting recycled,” Bonta said. “And inevitably some of them end up in our state’s waterways and other ecosystems.”
Bonta launched an investigation into bag producers in 2022, part of an effort to reduce plastic pollution and fight what he has called deceptive messaging to consumers over the recyclability of plastics. Last year, he sued ExxonMobil over similar claims – that the petroleum giant falsely told the public that waste from the plastic it produces is recycled, when it actually ends up in landfills. Exxon responded by putting the blame back on the state, saying that “for decades, California officials have known their recycling system isn’t effective. They failed to act, and now they seek to blame others.”
“Californians deserve honesty, transparency and products they can trust,” Bonta said Friday. He said that it costs California millions of dollars each year to manage plastic waste, and that billions of plastic carry-out bags are thrown away or end up in the environment instead of being recycled as promised.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, seen here in 2023, announced a settlement with four plastic bag producers on Friday, over issues of recycling – or lack thereof. (Jessica Christian/The Chronicle)
As part of the settlement announced Friday, the four manufacturers – Revolution Sustainable Solutions, Metro Poly Corp., PreZero US Packaging and Advance Polybag – will stop selling the bags to California stores and collectively pay over $1.7 million in penalties and legal fees.
The Chronicle has reached out to the four companies for comment.
Manufacturers involved in the settlement and lawsuit, which together make up all of the producers supplying plastic grocery bags in the state, label the bags with the chasing arrows symbol or other messaging that indicates they can be recycled, but those companies were unable to provide evidence that recycling facilities in California recycled the bags, Bonta said. That is because very few, if any, recycling facilities in the state recycle plastic bags, the investigation found.
A state law passed in 2014, Senate Bill 270, banned so-called single use plastic bags and required that plastic bags be reusable and recyclable in the state. But experts found that effort may have introduced even more plastic to the system because the new bags were heavier – with the goal of being reusable – and were not ultimately recycled. Last year, the state passed SB1023, which effectively closed what was seen as a loophole in the previous law by banning all plastic bags from stores.
Californians throw away the equivalent of 290 Olympic swimming pools full of single-use plastics per day, according to CalRecycle, a branch of the state environmental protection agency. Many plastic bags end up in the ocean, and those in landfills break down into microplastics rather than biodegrading. Microplastics have been found in human blood and breast milk and harm wildlife.
This article originally published at California says 4 plastic bag makers will stop sales in state in recycling settlement.