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California would ban all plastic procuring bags in 2026 underneath a brand new bill introduced Thursday within the state Legislature.
California already bans skinny plastic procuring bags at grocery stores and different retailers, however buyers at checkout can buy bags made with a thicker plastic that purportedly makes them reusable and recyclable.
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Democratic state Sen. Catherine Blakespear mentioned individuals are not reusing or recycling these bags. She factors to a state examine that discovered the quantity of plastic procuring bags trashed per particular person grew from 8 kilos per yr in 2004 to 11 kilos per yr in 2021.
“It shows that the plastic bag ban that we passed in this state in 2014 did not reduce the overall use of plastic. It actually resulted in a substantial increase in plastic,” Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, mentioned Thursday. “We are literally choking our planet with plastic waste.”
California Democratic state Senator Catherine Blakespear gestures towards an individual lined in plastic bags at a information convention in Sacramento, California, on Thursday, Feb. 8, 2024. (AP/Adam Beam)
Twelve states, together with California, have already got some kind of statewide plastic bag ban in place, in accordance with the environmental advocacy group Environment America Research & Policy Center. Hundreds of cities throughout 28 states even have their very own plastic bag bans in place.
While California’s bag ban would apply statewide, it would solely find yourself impacting about half the state’s inhabitants, in accordance with Mark Murray, lead advocate for the environmental advocacy group Californians Against Waste. That’s as a result of a lot of the state’s main cities already ban a majority of these thicker plastic bags. But a state legislation handed in 2014 and authorised by voters in a 2016 referendum bans cities from passing new legal guidelines proscribing plastic bag use.
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If the Legislature passes this bill, it would be as much as Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom to resolve whether or not to signal it into legislation. As San Francisco’s mayor in 2007, Newsom signed the nation’s first plastic bag ban.
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