While recently celebrating the protection of natural resources during Ocean Day at the California State Capitol, legislators including state Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica) announced a package of bills to address the mounting waste crisis affecting the coastline, waterways and landfills. Led by Allen, the group includes Sens. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Assemblymembers Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica), Sydney Kamlager (D-Los Angeles), Wendy Carrillo (D-Los Angeles), Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), Phil Ting (D-San Francisco), Steve Bennett (D-Ventura) and Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego).

“Plastic waste is a global threat to our oceans, marine life, natural resources and public health,” said Allen, who chairs the California Senate Environmental Quality Committee. “But it’s also hitting regular folks who are being asked to pay more and more through trash pickup rates to put patches on our broken waste management system. I’m glad to be joined by my colleagues as we work to tackle this issue. It’s going to take a coordinated, multi-faceted approach to begin to address this urgent financial, health, equity and environmental challenge.”

The package of legislation includes Senate Bill 54, the Plastic Pollution Producer Responsibility Act. It will ensure California is on the forefront of reducing pollution from single-use packaging by keeping the most problematic disposable items out of the waste system, saving local governments millions of dollars in disposal costs and protecting the environment. The bill requires producers to reduce disposables by right-sizing packaging and shifting to reusables where possible. It also sets ambitious recycling and composting requirements for materials that enter the state, requiring all disposable packaging and food service plasticware to be recyclable or compostable by 2032.

The package also includes Senate Bill 343, the Truth in Labeling for Recyclable Material Act. SB 343 will reduce consumer confusion about which plastics are recyclable in California by building on the Truth in Environmental Advertising law by prohibiting the use of the word recyclable on products that are not actually made from recyclable materials. SB 343 will extend this prohibition to also include the chasing-arrows symbol, which most consumers believe denotes recyclability. 

Assembly Bill 649, the California Buy Recycled Act, will require state agencies to adhere to the same minimum content standards for procurement as private industry. Assembly Bill 802, the Microfiber Filtration in State and Commercial Facilities Act, will reduce the leakage of microfibers into the natural environment; and AB 818, which will require pre-moistened, nonwoven disposable wipes to be labeled with the phrase “do not flush” and prevents manufacturers from making claims the products are flushable.

Additional legislation would regulate the use of food service plasticware, plastic film in e-commerce, microfiber filtration in washing machines, overseas recycling exports, composting and the way returnable bottles are recycled.