California Governor signs law banning all plastic bags in grocery stores

CNN
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“Paper or plastic” will no longer be the choice between plastic bags at grocery store checkouts in California after Governor Gavin Newsom signed a new law on Sunday banning all plastic shopping bags.

In California, thin plastic bags were already banned in supermarkets and other stores. However, customers could also buy bags made of thicker plastic that were supposedly reusable and recyclable.

The new measure, passed by the state legislature last month, will ban all plastic shopping bags starting in 2026. Consumers who do not bring their own bag will simply be asked if they want a paper bag.

State Senator Catherine Blakespear, one of the bill's sponsors, said people are not reusing or recycling plastic bags. She pointed to a government study that found the amount of plastic bags discarded per person has increased from 8 pounds (3.6 kilograms) per year in 2004 to 11 pounds (5 kilograms) per year in 2021.

Blakespear, a Democrat, said the last bag ban passed a decade ago did not reduce overall plastic use.

“We are literally suffocating our planet with plastic waste,” she said in February.

Environmental nonprofit Oceana praised Newsom for signing the bill and for “protecting California's coast, marine life and communities from single-use plastic bags.”

Christy Leavitt, director of the Oceana Plastics Campaign, said Sunday that the new ban on single-use plastic bags at supermarket checkouts “solidifies California's leadership in tackling the global plastic pollution crisis.”

Twelve states, including California, have already enacted some sort of statewide plastic bag ban, according to the environmental group Environment America Research & Policy Center. Hundreds of cities in 28 states have also enacted their own plastic bag bans.

The California State Legislature passed a statewide ban on plastic bags in 2014. The law was later approved by voters in a referendum in 2016.

The California Public Interest Research Group said Sunday that the new law finally fulfills the intent of the original bag ban.

“Plastic bags pollute our environment and break down into microplastics that contaminate our drinking water and endanger our health,” said Jenn Engstrom, director of the group. “Californians voted to ban plastic bags in our state nearly a decade ago, but the law clearly needed to be revised. With the governor's signature, California has finally banned plastic bags at supermarket checkouts once and for all.”

As mayor of San Francisco, Newsom signed the country's first plastic bag ban in 2007.