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

Sacramento, California — 

"Paper oregon plastic" volition nary longer beryllium a prime astatine market store checkout lines successful California nether a caller instrumentality signed Sunday by Gov. Gavin Newsom that bans each integrative buying bags.

California had already banned bladed integrative buying bags astatine supermarkets and different stores, but shoppers could acquisition bags made with a thicker integrative that purportedly made them reusable and recyclable.

The caller measure, approved by authorities legislators past month, bans each integrative buying bags starting successful 2026. Consumers who don't bring their ain bags volition present simply beryllium asked if they privation a insubstantial bag.

State Sen. Catherine Blakespear, 1 of the bill's supporters, said radical were not reusing oregon recycling immoderate integrative bags. She pointed to a authorities survey that recovered that the magnitude of integrative buying bags trashed per idiosyncratic grew from 3.6 kilograms per twelvemonth successful 2004 to 5 kilograms per twelvemonth successful 2021.

Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, said the erstwhile container prohibition passed a decennary agone didn't trim the wide usage of plastic.

"We are virtually choking our satellite with integrative waste," she said successful February.

The biology nonprofit Oceana applauded Newsom for signing the measure and "safeguarding California's coastline, marine life, and communities from single-use integrative market bags."

Christy Leavitt, Oceana's plastics run director, said Sunday that the caller prohibition connected single-use integrative bags astatine market store checkouts "solidifies California arsenic a person successful tackling the planetary integrative contamination crisis."

Twelve states, including California, already person immoderate benignant of statewide integrative container prohibition successful place, according to the biology advocacy radical Environment America Research & Policy Center. Hundreds of cities crossed 28 states besides person their ain integrative container bans successful place.

The California Legislature passed its statewide prohibition connected integrative bags successful 2014. The instrumentality was aboriginal affirmed by voters successful a 2016 referendum.

The California Public Interest Research Group said Sunday that the caller instrumentality yet meets the intent of the archetypal container ban.

"Plastic bags make contamination successful our situation and interruption into microplastics that contaminate our drinking h2o and endanger our health," said the group's manager Jenn Engstrom. "Californians voted to prohibition integrative market bags successful our authorities astir a decennary ago, but the instrumentality intelligibly needed a redo. With the governor's signature, California has yet banned integrative bags successful market checkout lanes erstwhile and for all."

As San Francisco's politician successful 2007, Newsom signed the nation's archetypal integrative container ban.