Attorneys general from seventeen states are suing California over its landmark single-use plastics law, which went into effect June 1.
The lawsuit comes after a coalition of environmental groups sued the state over the same law this month, arguing that the final new regulations create loopholes so large they gut the law.
The states are led by Nebraska Atty. Gen. Mike Hilgers and the plaintiffs include the National Association. of Wholesalers-Distributors. The coalition asks the court to immediately block the implementation of the law.
“Once again, California is trying to enact a policy that negatively impacts the rest of the country,” Hilgers said in a news release. “If California is left unchecked, consumers will be forced to pay more for basic necessities.”
The other states in the coalition are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and West Virginia. The lawsuit was filed Monday in the Eastern District Court of California in Sacramento.
State Senate Bill 54, the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act, was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2022. It was considered landmark legislation because it requires plastic and packaging companies to use less single-use plastic and ensure that by 2032 all food packaging is recyclable or compostable.
Accumulating plastic waste it's overwhelming waterways and oceansdisgusting and threatening marine life human health.
The intention was not only to reduce single-use plastic, but also to place the responsibility and cost of dealing with it on producers and packaging manufacturers, not on consumers and local governments. It was supposed to incentivize companies to consider the fate of their products and spur innovation in materials redesign.
Plastic bottles of dishwashing liquid at Compton's Market in Sacramento on June 17, 2022.
(Rico Pedroncelli/AP)
According a state analysis2.9 million tons of single-use plastic and 171.4 billion single-use plastic components were sold, offered for sale or distributed during 2023 in California.
The single-use plastics law is what is known as the producer responsibility law. It emphasizes the idea of a “circular economy” in which the producer of a material must consider its fate, ensuring that it can be reused or recycled, or at least reduced.
In California, all producers of single-use containers and plastic food utensils (plates, knives, spoons, etc.) join a private entity known as a producer responsibility organization. Only one such organization has been approved in California: the Circular Action Alliance.
The states and the National Association. of Wholesalers-Distributors say the plastic law discriminates against companies that sell in the state in two ways: by forcing them to change or alter their plastic packaging and by conferring government authority on the alliance, allowing a private entity to regulate and impose taxes and fees on companies that sell in California.
“California has no right to pronounce policy at the national level,” Eric Hoplin, president and CEO of the wholesale group, said in a statement. “Because the Act extends California's regulatory reach far beyond its borders and includes within its scope conduct wholly foreign to California, the Act violates the principles of federalism, horizontal separation of powers, and due process.”
Additionally, attorneys general say the law suppresses their free speech by forcing companies to join and fund the expression of an organization they may disagree with.
Hoplin and his organization filed a similar lawsuit in Oregon in February. Oregon has a comparable law on single-use plastics. A federal judge blocked the application of that law. The trial begins on July 13.
Heidi Sanborn, executive director and CEO of the National Stewardship Action Council, which advocates for producer responsibility laws and a more circular economy, said in May that both SB 54 and the Oregon law are public policies that were “passed by legislatures and implemented with government oversight.”
He said the laws create clear and consistent rules for all producers to contribute fairly to the cost of recycling and waste management.
Meanwhile, environmental groups are also unhappy.
On June 2, Oceana, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Californians Against Waste Foundation filed a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court.
They allege that the law's final regulations, drafted and approved by the state's waste agency, include exclusions for large categories of plastic packaging that companies could use indefinitely. In addition, they say, the regulations also allow recycling technologies that pollute, such as chemical recycling, which the law in its original wording prohibits.
“While SB 54 remains a monumental achievement as the strongest single-use plastic reduction law in the country, some of the final regulations implementing the statute undermine the law's ambitions,” Christy Leavitt, Oceana's senior campaign director, said in a statement.
