A bill aimed at banning all plastic bags from grocery stores and other stores moved ahead in the Senate Environmental Quality Committee on Wednesday with a 5-2 vote split across party lines.
Senate Bill 1053, authored by Senator Catherine Blakespear (D-Encinitas), was introduced in February. According to SB 1053, the bill would change the current plastic bag law and revise the single-use carryout bag exception to include a bag provided to a customer before the customer reaches the point of sale that is designed to protect a purchased item from damaging or contaminating other purchased items in a checkout bag, or to contain an unwrapped food item. The bill would also revise the definition of “recycled paper bag” to require it be made from 100% postconsumer recycled materials, without exception. SB 1053 would also require a reusable grocery bag sold by a store to a customer at the point of sale to meet different requirements including that it not be made from plastic film material, as well as repeal the provisions relating to certification of reusable grocery bags, and would repeal a provision relating to certain obsolete at-store recycling program requirements.
In laymans terms, stores will be going back to using solely paper alternate bags despite laws made decades ago that added plastic as an option due to worry about deforestation. If passed, the bill will go into law starting in January 2026.
Senator Blakespear wrote her bill alongside Assemblywoman Rebecca Bauer-Kahan’s (D-Orinda) AB 2236 due in large part because of how studies found that most Californians were either not recycling those bags or were still using the thicker bags as one time only bags, despite being designed to be used multiple times. According to one state study cited by Blakespear, the amount of plastic shopping bags trashed per person grew from 8 pounds per year in 2014 to 11 pounds per year in 2021, despite the massive law change. She also acknowledged how plastic bags were still causing environmental damage, and that a total ban was the only way to stop it. Some coastal cleanup surveys also found that volunteers have collected over 300,000 plastic grocery bags in the last three decades.
SB 1053 moves up
“If you have been paying attention – if you read the news at all in recent years – you know we are choking our planet with plastic waste,” said Senator Blakespear at a press conference in February. “A plastic bag has an average lifespan of 12 minutes and then it is discarded, often clogging sewage drains, contaminating our drinking water and degenerating into toxic microplastics that fester in our oceans and landfills for up to 1,000 years. It’s time to improve on California’s original plastic bags ban and do it right this time by completely eliminating plastic bags from being used at grocery stores.
“[Studies show] that the plastic bag ban that we passed in this state in 2014 did not reduce the overall use of plastic. It actually resulted in a substantial increase in plastic. We are literally choking our planet with plastic waste.”
SB 1053 quickly gained the support of environmentalists, storeowner organizations and other groups. Some opponents did come out against the bill, citing studies showing that plastic bans failed to reduce overall disposal and recycling costs. However, because of the support, experts said that it was likely to pass later this year.
On Wednesday, the bill passed it’s first hurdle in the Senate Environmental Quality Committee. However, the 5-2 vote showed that there was significant opposition to the bill, and that the plastic ban legislation wouldn’t go down without a fight, much to supporters chagrin.
“There is more opposition to this one than they originally had planned on,” explained Dana, a staffer in the Capitol to the Globe on Thursday. “These holes in the bill are only going to be exposed more down the line. There’s still a ton of committees and a Senate and Assembly vote left. Even if it does pass, opponents to this bill are going to lay everything out as to why this is bad. It will still likely pass, but it won’t pass very cleanly.”
SB 1053 is expected to be heard next in the next Senate Committee soon.
View Comments (13)
While California burns, our micro managers nit pick against bags.
Of course the multi use bags are only used once. It is the nature of the human trying to dodge bullets, not get trampled by looters and try to "keep food over here and bacteria over there".
From the article: "There’s still a ton of committees and a Senate and Assembly vote left." This is what keeps these Karens up at night: Think up new ways to nit picking consumers trying to get their overpriced groceries home to their starving, combat fatigued kids.
Awe so true.
Keep voting for these people and they will generate useless bills that hurt businesses. This state has a73 billion dollar deficit. Newsom plays off, like no big deal!!!
While California burns, our micro managers nit pick against bags.
Of course the multi use bags are only used once. It is the nature of the human trying to dodge bullets, not get trampled by looters and try to "keep food over here and bacteria over there".
From the article: "There’s still a ton of committees and a Senate and Assembly vote left."
This is what gives these Karens a reason to live: To think up new ways to nit pick consumers trying to get their overpriced groceries home to their starving, combat fatigued kids.
Exactly right and well said, Chuckiechan. These people love to IGNORE the REALITY of California's present smoldering hellhole while instead becoming scenery-chewing Drama Queens about trivia like this. And don't forget major lies and exaggeration are the name of the game.
Contact your senator ---- or Sen Blakespear herself ---- if you are so inclined, if only to pile on to those who are already working to discourage these stupid, pointless efforts while California is near death throes from a collection of actual, serious diseases. Include Sen Blakespear's own quote, if you like:
"The plastic bag ban passed in 2014 did not reduce the overall use of plastic – it actually resulted in a substantial increase in plastic." Helloooo! Is anyone home?
https://www.senate.ca.gov/senators
SB 1053. Blakespear.
I would challenge their data of "collecting 300,000 plastic bags over the last 3 decades" or 30 years. If you do the math this equates to 27.4 bags collected every day for 30 years along California's coastline which is approximately 840 miles. So, they find 1 bag every 30.6 miles. So exactly how big is this problem and is it worth the price of the overhaul that is being pushed on us?
Hal, thanks for conducting that straightforward and revealing math. Most of California's legislators are graduates of the California public school system, so instead of getting letter grades in math class they got participation trophies.
That's great Hal. Actual number-crunching is the WAY to put the lie to these legislators and their nonsense, as well as their obsession with trivia. Probably won't have any effect on the Dem/Marxist legislators themselves, but it fires up the audience for sure.
PLUS, think of all the things these bags are now used for, as Katy Grimes has listed in past articles. Not least as makeshift waste product bags ---- for pets AND for homeless/vagrants. What's the answer for that, Dear Legislators? And that's not even the half of it. We know that most people (but not all) will simply end up buying more plastic bags in a roll to make up for not having re-usable grocery bags. And that solves what, exactly?
SO TIRED of these serious time-wasters, as well as the foolish "lawmakers" who roll them out to justify their own existence. Items we have to waste MORE time responding to anyway, given the minuscule chance our response might have an effect somehow.
CA has gone from paper bag ban to plastic
then
plastic ban to paper bags + plastic made reusable that was much worse than plastic bags
added 10 cents per bag for NO REASON AT ALL
then
back from paper to plastic bags and kept 10 cents TAX / FEE
Its endless stupidity here meanwhile China/India do not bother with idiocy and generate power and plastic however they want. CA acts as if CA controls climate such insanity
not to mention EV cars which end up using much more oil/gas to make tham
YES, Orwellianism, absolutely --- you are 100% correct about all of it.
And don't forget during Fake Covid Hysteria we were whipsawed again when the state said our innocent washable canvas grocery bags that most were finally and dutifully using (like it mattered) were plague-carriers and THOSE re-usable bags were banned from grocery stores while they ushered in the totally-useless-for-re-use double-thick plastic bags again.
Democrat Sen. Catherine Blakespear wants to not only ban plastic bags with SB 1053 and she also wants to ban disposable cups with SB 1167.
Blakespear is another radical leftist Democrat lawyer who grew up privileged and pampered in the upscale beach community of Encinitas which has been repeatedly sued over policies that try to undermine state affordable housing laws. Blakespear lives in a large mansion on a six acre estate in Encinitas. No doubt she dines at only the most expensive restaurants with the finest glass wear where disposable cups are never seen? She probably has household help who do the shopping for her and she hasn’t had to schlep any plastic grocery bags for years?
She’s another wealthy coastal Democrat who is completely out of touch with the struggles of average Californians?
LOL, still funny, TJ. AND of course informative!
All of these ridiculous committees which do nothing but cost taxpayers...
Ain't central management of their herd by drooling fools, con artists and jesters great.