California adopts plastic bag ban, files lawsuit claiming recycling a ‘PR stunt’

(The Center Square) – After decades of promoting plastics recycling, California adopted a total plastic shopping bag ban and filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil, claiming plastic recycling is a “public relations stunt.”

With the state’s outbreak of fecal-transmitted hepatitis among homeless individuals correlated with the onset of the state’s first single-use plastic bag ban that required reusable plastic bags to be purchased for ten cents, the new complete ban could worsen the disease’s spread.

In 2016, California voters passed a more limited plastic bag ban that required stores to sell reusable plastic bags, or paper bags, at checkout for ten cents instead of providing bags for free. State Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas, sponsored legislation to completely ban plastic bags after research found Californians’ plastic waste per capita increased 50% after the ban due to the use of much thicker bags to qualify as “reusable.”

Under the new ban, which takes effect on January 1, 2026, shoppers can bring their own bags, or buy paper bags at checkout. Plastic bags, which can take 1,000 years to decay, are a major source of microplastics building up in human tissues allegedly causing a wide range of human health issues. However, the majority of microplastics are produced from washing clothes made from synthetic, plastic fabrics and tires bits breaking off during regular driving. Ten rivers in Africa and Asia are responsible for 93% of plastic entering the world’s oceans.

Republicans say the state’s focus on plastic over more immediate issues such as inflation and crime reflects misplaced priorities.

“While Californians grapple with worsening crime, rising costs, and homelessness, Radical Democrats are focusing their energy on banning recyclable plastic bags,” said Senate Minority Leader Brian W. Jones, R-San Diego, to The Center Square. “Because when you step on one of those free needles at the beach, you’ll surely be relieved that it wasn’t a recyclable bag.”

In San Diego, the county’s hepatitis outbreak was blamed by some on the plastic bag ban, as homeless individuals use plastic bags to defecate in. San Diego County Public Health Officer Wilma Wooten told the San Diego Reader “We know people use the bags for that … that’s why we put plastic bags in the hygiene kits we’re handing out.”

Later analyses have found the thicker plastic bags now sold in grocery stores as recyclable and reusable are difficult to recycle, use twice as much plastic, and have to go to special recycling facilities — and that not a single recycling center in California accepts these bags for recycling.

The new plastic bag ban is part of the state’s broader turn against plastics recycling. While 70% of the world’s plastic used to be sent to China for recycling, in 2018 China banned the importation of foreign trash for recycling inputs, leading to that recycling to be diverted to other countries that would take the money for recycling but end up letting that trash go into the rivers and later, oceans.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobile, one of the largest oil companies in the world, the same day Newsom announced he signed the new plastic bag ban.

“In reality, only about 5% of U.S. plastic waste is recycled, and the recycling rate has never exceeded 9%,” wrote Bonta’s office in a statement. “ExxonMobil’s ‘advanced recycling’ program is nothing more than a public relations stunt meant to encourage the public to keep purchasing single-use plastics that are fueling the plastics pollution crisis.”

Bonta’s office complains that 92% of plastic put into its “advanced recycling” system becomes fuel, such as jet fuel, while only 8% becomes plastic again.

When Bonta went on CNBC to discuss his lawsuit and reiterated his challenge to recycling, host Becky Quick noted, “advanced recycling sounds like a better thing than nothing, than going into a landfill.”

Bonta responded, “They don’t get any credit for advanced recycling, turning things into jet fuel that’s emitted into the air or transportation fuel,” to which Quick said, “So your point is we shouldn’t have jet fuel?”

Quick then asked Bonta if he took an airplane from California for the CNBC interview, to which he said yes.