Sweeping California law on single-use plastic meets with outrage from all sides as it goes live

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Within days of California’s long-anticipated single use plastic law going into effect, environmentalists and anti-waste activists announced they plan to sue.They say Gov.Gavin Newsom’s administration and CalRecycle inserted exemptions favoring the plastic industry into the law’s regulations that weaken it and undermine legislative intent.“These new rules create huge loopholes for plastic packaging that violate the law,” said Avinash Kar, senior director of the toxics program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“We expect to challenge this in court.”The suit, which has not yet been filed, is supported by NRDC and Californians Against Waste, a Sacramento-based waste organization.On the other side, the packaging industry also is unhappy with the law, and although it has not officially announced its intent to sue, “our members have real concerns about cost, compliance, and constitutionality,” said Matt Clarke, spokesman for the National Assn.of Wholesaler-Distributors, which sued Oregon earlier this year over a similar waste law.

CalRecycle did not respond in time for publication.The environmental organizations say the new final regulations open the door to what is known as “chemical recycling,” which produces large amounts of hazardous waste.The law also contains problematic exemptions for certain categories of plastic foodware, they say.

The language of the law forbids any kind of recycling that would produce significant amounts of hazardous waste.The new regulations allow for these recycling methods if the facilities are properly permitted.

The new regulations also exempt certain products if they are already covered by federal law.For instance, a packaging company, retailer or distributor can claim that they have such a preemption, Kar said, and CalRecycle might not immediately review that claim.

“And as long as they don’t review it, they’ll g...