California’s New Plastics Pollution Law Is A Harbinger Of What’s To Come

For a few decades, Big Oil has had another trick up its sleeve in its quest to exploit the planet for profit for as long as possible: plastics. Fossil fuel companies see plastics as a revenue stream that could potentially replace their traditional business model of selling fossil fuels.

Plastic production rose after World War II and has exploded over the last few decades even as demand for more conventional fossil fuel products has either grown more slowly or stagnated. Since large-scale plastics production began in the 1950s, global production of resins and fibers (source materials for plastics) has skyrocketed from two megatons in 1950 to 460 megatons in 2019. That’s about a 230-fold increase in plastics compared to a roughly sevenfold increase in overall fossil fuel consumption over that time frame.

That growth won’t stop anytime soon. Assuming historical growth trends continue, global production could reach 1,100 megatons by 2050. Today, plastic production consumes less than 10% of all oil produced. By 2050, that figure is expected to jump to 20%. Producing plastic is inherently harmful…disposing of it might be even worse. Less than 10% of globally consumed plastic is recycled. The rest either ends up in landfills or the ocean.

Plastic pollution decimates wildlife, suffocating them and/or ruining their internal health. Plastic waste can release harmful chemicals into soil, affecting drinking water for humans and non-human species alike. Microorganisms like viruses and bacteria can use plastic particles to hitchhike, thereby spreading through existing environments or finding new ones.

Moreover, as the United Nations reports, “the level of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production, use, and disposal of conventional fossil fuel-based plastics is forecast to grow to 19 percent of the global carbon budget by 2040.”

Clearly, the stakes are high to rein in plastic pollution going forward. After years of highly charged political wrangling, California recently made major legislative headway in combating plastic waste with the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act, aka SB54. As this sort of legislation becomes more critical and sees further adoption around the world, it’s worth understanding California’s new law–what led to its passage, what inspired its design, what concerns it has raised, and why it is well-timed.

What Spurred SB54?

The initial impetus for crafting this sort of legislation in California occurred on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. California once exported about a third of its recyclable materials, much of it to China. But in 2017, China abruptly announced a new National Sword policy to stop the smuggling of illegal scrap imports. It strengthened contamination standards and banned imports of certain types of waste. Since then, several waste-related bills have been crafted but they’ve mostly focused on singular waste-related issues rather than providing a more comprehensive framework to tackle this crisis. They’ve had mixed success.

SB54 was first introduced in 2019, then again in 2020. COVID put a wrench in the legislative process, which inspired people who believed California’s legislature would never get a deal done to introduce their measure and leave it up to California voters, nearly 900,000 of whom voted in 2021 to put that measure on the 2022 ballot.

Many environmental groups had planned to support the competing ballot measure in the upcoming November midterm elections. But, as a late June deadline approached to withdraw the measure from the ballot, pressure rose to craft a robust piece of legislation that all parties– industry, environmental groups, and government officials–preferred over the ballot measure. SB54 sailed through California’s House and Senate before Governor Gavin Newsom signed it into law on June 30.

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What Does The SB54 Include?

SB54 includes several provisions aimed at reducing plastic pollution. It “mandates a 25% reduction of single-use plastic packaging and foodservice products by 2032, with nearly half of that reduction coming from either switching to reuse and refill systems or the direct elimination of plastic packaging.” SB54 also requires the achievement of a 30% recycling, reuse, or composting rate for single-use plastics used in the state by 2028, followed by targets of 40% by 2030 and 65% by 2032. By mandating both less plastic production and that all single-use plastic be either recyclable or compostable, SB54 goes a long way toward attacking the roots of this crisis.

Furthermore, under SB54, plastic makers “would pay for recycling programs and will be charged fees based on the weight of packaging, the ease of recycling and whether products contain toxic substances, such as PFAS, a type of virtually indestructible chemicals that have been linked to increased risk of some cancers.” These provisions put the responsibility on those who produce plastics rather than those who consume them to clean up the mess. This is called extended producer responsibility (EPR). California became the fourth state to pass EPR legislation after Oregon, Maine, and Colorado. EPR is the intellectual underpinning of SB54 and is critical to understanding the context of plastic waste mitigation.

What Concerns Some People Have About The Law

Compared to the ballot measure that California was ready to present to its voters, SB54 gives the plastics industry more time to get in line. The ballot measure would have mandated compliance by 2030 instead of 2032. That alone has given some people pause that plastics polluters will work judiciously to cut down on waste and adhere to both the law’s provisions and the spirit behind it.

But California’s environmental community has bigger concerns. Some environmentalists worry that SB54 will allow for chemical recycling to count toward the law’s targets. Chemical recycling is a highly controversial form of waste management. Generally speaking, it uses heat and/or chemical reactions to break down used plastics into new plastic, fuel, or other chemicals.

Critics argue the term doesn’t do justice to what the process entails. There are various types of chemical recycling, some of which do result in proper plastics recycling. But many chemical recycling processes “generate a limited amount of energy in a one-time process, destroying them rather than giving them another material use.” Meanwhile, excessive toxic waste is often leaked, and environmental injustice is exacerbated.

This debate has reached the highest levels of the United States government. In July 2022, 35 federal lawmakers sent a letter urging the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to continue regulating chemical recycling technologies as waste combustion rather than actual recycling. Meanwhile, over 100 environmental groups sent a separate letter to the EPA in which they lambasted chemical recycling as an unsafe technology that could be used to turn plastics into fuel instead of recycling them into new plastics.

Another concern is that some of the law’s wording could create enough wiggle room for plastic wasters to carve loopholes and exempt certain product categories from regulation. For instance, some of the law’s language would allow CalRecycle to exempt materials that present “unique challenges” in complying with the EPR provisions. Judith Enck, founder, and president of Beyond Plastics, worries this wording could invite legal challenges to exempt a wide array of plastic products, which could become a legal headache for California.

The EPR framework has also raised concerns that giving plastics polluters this much power to manage their waste is a grave mistake. In the midst of final negotiations on SB54, members of 18 environmental justice groups in California urged ballot petitioners to keep their anti-pollution measure on the ballot, saying they “just don’t have confidence that an industry so prone to deceiving the public for so long about the impacts of its products on our communities and our planet will now take the starring role in its own demise voluntarily.”

In short, the debate over EPR gets right to the heart of many environmental debates: who can be trusted to clean up the mess?

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Why SB54 Is Well-Timed

As with many other aspects of our global environmental headache, people in power are starting to act against plastic waste. In July 2021, the European Union passed a Directive on Single-Use Plastics, which bans more than ten types of single-use products and requires EU member states to limit their use of other single-use plastic items, among other provisions. Canada began an EPR program similar to California’s last year, and India banned most single-use plastics as of July 2022.

Most importantly, the United Nations Environmental Assembly (UNEA) resolved to develop a treaty on post-consumer plastic pollution by the end of 2024. The treaty will likely include measures to deal with microplastics as well as improved product design and biodegradability. An agreement of this scale typically takes five to ten years, so the expedited timeline reflects a growing sense of urgency by governments and diplomats about the scourge of plastic waste. This global treaty may be the most significant environmental treaty since the Paris Agreement.