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- California’s ban on polystyrene was one of the biggest wins for environmentalists in the state’s recent history.
- It went into effect on Jan. 1 — but no one, including the governor’s office and CalRecycle, is talking about it.
- Experts believe that the plastics industry may be working behind the scenes to throw implementation of the law off course before it has a chance to get going.
On Jan. 1, polystyrene packaging became illegal to sell, distribute or import into California — the result of a landmark waste law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2022, and heralded by lawmakers and environmentalists as a game-changer in the fight against single-use plastics and pollution.
But few would have known that this particularly pernicious plastic polymer had been phased out if they’d been waiting for the state to make mention of this monumental milestone — one that environmentalists describe as an unequivocal demonstration of the law’s strength to phase out problematic, single-use plastics for which there is little if any recycling available.
That’s because no statements or acknowledgments about the effective ban have been released by the governor’s office or CalRecycle, the agency charged with overseeing and enforcing the law.
Instead, there’s growing concern among environmental groups and some lawmakers that plastic manufacturers, producers and distributors are waging a behind-the-scenes battle to derail the plastics law, known as SB 54. The regulations for the law, which have been argued and negotiated over the last two-and-a-half years by the plastic and packaging companies, lawmakers and environmentalists, are supposed to be finalized on March 8. If not, the stakeholders will have to start the whole process over again.
They are also worried that the silence emanating from Newsom’s office is an indication the whole deal may be off course.
“We need to stay on track with SB 54,” said state Sen. Catherine Blakespear (D-Encinitas) who, along with 13 other lawmakers — including state Sen. Benjamin Allen (D-Santa Monica), the chief architect of the law — sent a letter last week to the governor urging him to “move forward and meet the timeline established in the law.”
“It is systems-level change. It is game-changing when we talk about trying to reduce the amount of plastic film and plastic waste and microplastics in our environment, in our bodies, in our oceans,” Blakespear said in an interview. “So the fact that the regulations might be delayed? I just find that to be unacceptable. There’s a process, and it’s iterative, so things can change if there are problems. But you have to start with something.”
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Daniel Villaseñor, a spokesman for the governor’s office, said in a statement that Newsom takes “stakeholder input very seriously” and is “considering all options for how to move forward to successfully implement this ambitious program.” He also said the governor is committed to “achieving the goals of SB54 — to cut down on plastic pollution.”
At the time the law was signed, Newsom said that California’s children “deserve a future free of plastic waste and all its dangerous impacts” and that as a result of the law, he and state lawmakers and regulators were going to hold “polluters responsible” and cut “plastics at the source.”
Neither the governor’s office nor CalRecycle responded to questions about their silence on the polystyrene ban. Nor would Villaseñor expand on what “options” the governor was considering. SB 54 was designed to start phasing out single-use plastics this year. The bill dictated that if polystyrene producers, sellers or distributors could not meet a 25% recycling rate by Dec. 31, 2024, the product would be banned. According to data kept by CalRecycle, the industry failed to achieve that target.
The law was designed to trigger a series of escalating composting and recycling requirements on consumer product packaging — with the polystyrene target pegged first.
By 2032, the companies are required to reduce single-use plastic packaging by 25%; ensure that 65% of that material is recyclable; and that 100% is either recyclable or compostable. SB 54 also requires packaging producers to bear the costs of their products’ end-life (whether via recycling, composting, landfill or export) and figure out how to make it happen — removing that costly burden from consumers and state and local governments.
According to one state analysis, 2.9 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.
Single-use plastics and plastic waste more broadly are considered a growing environmental and health problem. In recent decades, the accumulation of plastic waste has overwhelmed waterways and oceans, sickening marine life and threatening human health.
Although SB 54 was signed in 2022, the regulations that govern the law and its working definitions — such as the meaning of the word “producer,” or the date an industry-generated annual report is due — were to be hammered out over time by a group of stakeholders representing plastic manufacturers and producers, packaging companies, environmental groups and and waste haulers.
Those regulations are due on March 8, 2025. If the deadline is missed, say experts, it risks not only setting back implementation of the law, but also potentially derailing the whole thing.
“Advocating to delay implementing SB 54’s regulations is an effort to stymie California’s forward momentum” and a likely ploy to push for further timeline delays, said Jennifer Fearing, a lobbyist for several ocean protection and environmental organizations, who has has worked on the regulations since 2022. She’s worried if they miss the deadline, the plastic industry will use delays to the law’s ambitious goals.
On Dec. 2, 2024, a final draft of those negotiated regulations was posted by CalRecycle — which reviewed more than 450 letters and 5,000 comments, participated in dozens of daylong workshops, and met with scores of stakeholders and their lobbyists. And while groups such as the Ocean Conservancy sent letters to Newsom and CalRecycle, congratulating them on the herculean achievement, industry stakeholders were quietly sending a very different message: Hold off.
On Dec. 15, Adam Regele, vice president of advocacy and strategic partnerships for California’s Chamber of Commerce — which represents industry trade groups including the American Chemistry Council, Western Plastics Assn. and the Flexible Packaging Assn. — penned a letter to Gov. Newsom urging him to amend the law; his members, he said, believe it can’t work.
He cited costs to consumers, which he estimated as upward of $300 per year; he described the regulations as confusing and “overly prescriptive”; and he suggested that certain aspects of the law were at odds with federal statutes governing food safety. In addition, he wanted the regulations to allow for “alternative” methods of recycling, such as chemical recycling, saying that “existing recycling technology alone cannot successfully implement this program.”
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The original language of the law forbids any form of recycling that includes combustion, incineration or most kinds of energy generation. Chemical recycling typically involves superheating plastics to convert them into fuel. Some companies, such as ExxonMobil and Eastman Chemical Company, say they can use these alternative methods to create new plastic.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has argued that this claim is unsubstantiated. But other influential players side with Regele, including Rachel Wagoner, who served as CalRecycle’s director between 2020 and 2024.
Since leaving the state’s waste regulation agency, Wagoner has worked as a consultant for Eastman, and is now executive director of the Circular Action Alliance — an industry-run organization that is required by SB 54 to ensure its members comply with the law. The organization was founded by and now represents some of the world’s largest producers and distributors of plastic packaging, including Amazon, Coca-Cola, Conagra, Procter & Gamble and Target.
Wagoner told The Times that the Circulation Action Alliance has met with the governor’s office and has let officials know that the organization of plastic product manufacturers and retailers “would welcome having more time to finalize the regulations, to address... concerns, and to ensure SB 54 can be successfully implemented.”
In an email to The Times, a spokeswoman for the organization said its members remain “fully dedicated to building and implementing a strong operating plan for SB 54. However, several critical challenges must be addressed to ensure its success.”
The backroom dealing and calls for delay have caught environmental groups and lawmakers off-guard.
“I think now that the shiz is hitting the proverbial fan, everyone has very strong opinions about how to proceed and what’s reasonable and what is not,” said Allen, the state senator who designed and sponsored the law.
Lawmakers and environmental groups said that until December, there had been no indication that the industry had deal-breaking issues with the regulations. Indeed, they had been led to believe that while no one loved the regulations — there were compromises made by parties on all sides — they had come together to find workable agreements.
Anja Brandon, director of Plastics Policy at Ocean Conservancy, said that while she hadn’t seen all of the comments submitted to CalRecycle, “from the public workshops alone, it is clear that everyone from local government to the industry to the PRO (Producer Responsibility Organization) provided robust feedback throughout the process.”
She said her organization has worked closely with the industry throughout the process. “We’ve engaged with them both in the public feedback ... and have also reached out to them directly and had conversations, and sought to align some of our comments where we could. And so it’s really come as a disappointment and surprise to hear in this, the 11th hour, to hear them label these regulations as unworkable.”
As examples of late-stage backtracking, Brandon and others pointed to two letters sent to the governor: one on Dec. 14 from the Chamber of Commerce and another on Dec. 15 from Wagoner’s group — both of which highlight industry concerns about the finalized regulations.
She also pointed to a recent uptick in lobbying expenditures around the bill, including $177,500 from the Eastman Company and $18,500 from the Circular Action Alliance in the fourth quarter of 2024, as well as several meetings between the industry-backed organization’s representatives and the governor.
For some on the environmental advocacy side, these last-minute developments don’t come as a surprise.
“As I’ve said all along, SB 54 is a distract-and-delay tactic” by plastic manufacturers, packagers and distributors, said Jan Dell of Orange County-based Last Beach Cleanup. Since 2022, she has argued that the law was fundamentally flawed, leaving too much power to the plastic industry to oversee.
In 2022, Last Beach Cleanup and many other environmental groups supported a statewide ballot initiative that would have required, among other provisions, that all single-use plastic packaging and foodware produced, distributed and sold in California was recyclable, reusable, refillable, or compostable by 2030. It also would have banned polystyrene.
That initiative was pulled back by environmental groups and supporters in favor of this negotiated law, one that the plastics industry and packaging companies promised to support.
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SB 54’s future remains uncertain. In the meantime, some polystyrene manufacturers and distributors are already getting rid of the plastic in anticipation of the law coming into effect. For example, Ramit Plushnick-Masti, a spokesperson for Sysco, says the multinational giant has removed polystyrene items from its inventory in California.
Then there are those companies that stand to gain from SB 54, but are stuck waiting for decisions to be made in Sacramento. World Centric, a manufacturer of compostable, plant-based foodware and packaging based in Sonoma County’s Rohnert Park, had anticipated a growth in demand for its products. It had been planning to expand operations and hire more workers, but instead is now postponing its aspirations until there is more clarity about what comes next with the law, said Erin Levine, World Centric’s resource recovery manager.
“It’s too bad,” she said, noting that the growth of a company like World Centric — based in California and producing materials that can be recycled and/or composted — was just what the law was designed to encourage.
“I guess we’ll see what happens,” she said.
