Maps. Encyclopedias. 8-track tapes. Cameras with film. Phone booths.
Once they were common. Today? Relics. Now add “paper or plastic” to the list.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday signed a new law banning grocery stores across California from offering customers plastic carryout bags at checkout stands. Simply put, shoppers will have two choices starting Jan. 1, 2026 when the new law takes effect: Bring their own bags to the supermarket, or buy a recycled paper bag at the checkout, usually for 10 cents to 25 cents each.
“Nothing we use for a few minutes should pollute the environment for hundreds of years,” said Laura Deehan, state director of Environment California, a non-profit group that supported the bill. “Finally, with this necessary update to the bag ban, plastic grocery bags will no longer be a threat to sea turtles, birds, and other wildlife in California.”
For nearly a decade, California has banned flimsy, thin, single-use plastic bags at most supermarkets and other stores. They were prohibited 2016 when voters passed a state ballot measure, Proposition 67, over concerns about litter on the streets and plastic pollution in the ocean.
But that measure contained a loophole, inserted by some Democratic lawmakers in Sacramento who had plastic bag factories in their districts. It said that thicker plastic bags could still be used at stores if they were labeled as “recyclable” and could be reused.
The numbers of those sturdier plastic bags, which have handles and are common at stores such as Safeway and Target, have been climbing, and studies show that very few are being recycled.
The new bill, SB 1053, by Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Laguna Hills, and Assemblywoman Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, D-Orinda, will prohibit the thicker plastic bags at grocery stores, convenience stores, and large retail stores that also sell groceries, like Walmart.
“We deserve a cleaner future for our communities, our children and our earth,” Bauer-Kahan said Sunday. “It’s time for us to get rid of these plastic bags and continue to move forward with a more pollution-free environment.”
Two other states, New York and New Jersey, have also banned the thicker reusable plastic grocery bags over environmental concerns.
The new California law also will require that paper bags at grocery stores have at least 50% recycled paper content, up from the current 40%, by 2028.
Under the new law, one type of plastic still will be allowed in supermarkets, retail stores and convenience stores: the thin bags on rolls that are used to hold loose fruits and vegetables, or in the meat department.
The bill was supported by the Monterey Bay Aquarium and a wide range of environmental groups, including Sierra Club California, Save the Bay, and Californians Against Waste. It also was supported by the California Grocers Association. The grocery industry has faced several lawsuits from consumers who say the thick plastic bags are not really recyclable, as the stores claim.
Several major chains, such as Whole Foods and Trader Joes, already offer only paper bags at checkout stands.
“It won’t be a drastically different shopping scenario,” said Nate Rose, a spokesman for the California Grocers Association, in May when the bill first passed major hurdles in the Legislature. “There are still going to be paper bags available, and you can bring your own bags from home. It should be a smooth transition.”
The bill was opposed by the plastics industry, including the American Recyclable Plastic Bag Alliance, the Association of Plastic Recyclers, and the Western Plastics Association.
Republicans also voted against it in the Senate and Assembly.
“There are too many mandates on what people can and can’t do,” said Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher, R-Chico, earlier this year about the bill. “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 groups say more needs to be done about plastic pollution.
More than half of all the plastic that has ever existed on Earth was made in the last 20 years. Only 9% of the plastic sold every year in the United States is recycled. Up to 13 million metric tons of it ends up in the world’s ocean each year — the equivalent of a garbage truck-full being dumped into the sea every minute — where it kills fish, birds, sea turtles, whales and dolphins that eat it or become entangled by it.
Plastic lasts for hundreds of years. Making it consumes large amounts of petroleum products, which contributes to climate change. And at the current rate, one recent study found there will be more plastic by weight in the ocean in 2050 than fish, most of it broken into trillions of tiny pieces of toxic confetti.
“Plastic grocery bags have ranked in the top ten most commonly collected items by California Coastal Cleanup Day volunteers in seven of the last 10 years,” said Anja Britton with the Ocean Conservancy, an environmental group that supported the bill. “Over that decade, volunteers have cleaned up enough plastic bags to span the length of the Golden Gate Bridge nearly 30 times. Plastic grocery bags are not only one of the most common plastics polluting our beaches, but also one of the top five deadliest forms of plastic pollution to marine life.”
A boy walks on the plastic waste at the Badhwar Park beach on the Arabian Sea coast in Mumbai, India, Monday, June 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)