California governor signs law banning all plastic shopping bags at grocery stores

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — “Paper or plastic” will not be a selection at grocery retailer checkout strains in California beneath a brand new legislation signed Sunday by Gov. Gavin Newsom that bans all plastic buying luggage.

California had already banned skinny plastic buying luggage at supermarkets and different shops, however customers may buy luggage made with a thicker plastic that purportedly made them reusable and recyclable.

The brand new measure, permitted by state legislators final month, bans all plastic buying luggage beginning in 2026. Shoppers who don’t deliver their very own luggage will now merely be requested if they need a paper bag.

State Sen. Catherine Blakespear, one of many invoice’s supporters, mentioned folks weren’t reusing or recycling any plastic luggage. She pointed to a state research that discovered that the quantity of plastic buying luggage trashed per individual grew from 8 kilos (3.6 kilograms) per yr in 2004 to 11 kilos (5 kilograms) per yr in 2021.

Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, mentioned the earlier bag ban handed a decade in the past didn’t scale back the general use of plastic.

“We are actually choking our planet with plastic waste,” she mentioned in February.

The environmental nonprofit Oceana applauded Newsom for signing the invoice and “safeguarding California’s shoreline, marine life, and communities from single-use plastic grocery luggage.”

Christy Leavitt, Oceana’s plastics marketing campaign director, mentioned Sunday that the brand new ban on single-use plastic luggage at grocery retailer checkouts “solidifies California as a pacesetter in tackling the worldwide plastic air pollution disaster.”

Twelve states, together with California, have already got some kind of statewide plastic bag ban in place, in line with the environmental advocacy group Surroundings America Analysis & Coverage Middle. Tons of of cities throughout 28 states even have their very own plastic bag bans in place.

The California Legislature handed its statewide ban on plastic luggage in 2014. The legislation was later affirmed by voters in a 2016 referendum.

The California Public Curiosity Analysis Group mentioned Sunday that the brand new legislation lastly meets the intent of the unique bag ban.

“Plastic luggage create air pollution in the environment and break into microplastics that contaminate our consuming water and threaten our well being,” mentioned the group’s director Jenn Engstrom. “Californians voted to ban plastic grocery luggage in our state nearly a decade in the past, however the legislation clearly wanted a redo. With the Governor’s signature, California has lastly banned plastic luggage in grocery checkout lanes as soon as and for all.”

As San Francisco’s mayor in 2007, Newsom signed the nation’s first plastic bag ban.