California’s progress against plastic waste
The legislature is stepping up in the Golden State, but more work is still necessary
California took a significant step this week toward becoming a state “Beyond Plastic.” Both the Senate and Assembly passed CALPIRG-backed bills to ensure much more of the single use plastic and packaging we use is actually recycled.
AB 1080 by Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez and SB 54 by Sen. Ben Allen would establish state targets to reduce single-use plastic and packaging waste by 75 percent by 2030. CalRecycle would also be given the authority to implement regulations on manufacturers to help ensure the state stays on track to meet those targets, either through reduced use or increased recycling and composting.
This legislative action is very necessary. Last fall, CALPIRG Education Fund released The State of Waste in California, which found that Californians throw away six pounds of trash every day. That equates to almost 2,200 pounds every year or roughly the weight of a subcompact car. To make matters worse, the state has been trending in the wrong direction. CALPIRG researchers found that since 2012, disposal per resident has increased from 5.3 to 6 pounds, while the recycling rate has decreased from 50 percent to a current 44 percent.
Although California’s recycling rate remains above the national average of 34.7 percent, its results are well below the state’s 2020 goal of 75 percent. This is a statewide problem. In fact, every major California city has failed to improve their reduction of waste since 2012.
We should all be concerned about the rise in plastic and packaging waste. This is a worldwide problem as evidenced by the 91 percent of plastic worldwide that isn’t recycled.
California used to export much of its plastic waste to other countries, but that’s become increasingly difficult. Just this week Malaysia announced that it will be the latest South Asian country to stop accepting imported plastic scrap. It will send some 3,000 metric tons of this plastic waste back to where it came from, including the United States.
But California has the potential to push back on this trend. With the promise of a statewide single-use plastic bag ban — and Assemblyman Ian Calderon’s “straws on request bill” last year — there’s growing political support in favor of more comprehensive approaches to tackling plastic waste.
Dozens of environmental, health and business organizations, including all of these listed, are supporting AB 1080 and SB 54:
To build on this momentum, CALPIRG student volunteers have been holding educational events on and near campuses throughout the spring. They are driving efforts, like writing letters to the local newspapers, to support the bills in the legislature. A crew of nearly 100 students came up to Sacramento to lobby on bills including SB 54 and AB 1080 in March. Here’s just a few of the photos that CALPIRG students have sent my way!
Unfortunately, the plastics industry and manufacturers are trying to counter this work by opposing these and other legislative efforts to crack down on single-use plastics. Industry opponents paid signature gatherers to put Prop 67 on the ballot in 2016 in an attempt to roll back Californian’s ban on single-use plastic bags, and industry opposition successfully killed SB 705 in the last legislative session, which would have banned the use of polystyrene, also known as Styrofoam, for food containers. But we are hopeful that with this week’s votes, it’s only a matter of time before SB 54 and/or AB 1080 are signed into law, and the real work can begin to get California’s plastic recycling rates up to 75 percent as quickly as possible.
