What is California doing to reduce waste?

California’s 2023-2024 legislative session wrapped up on Saturday. Among the slew of legislation passed in the final weeks, three waste-busting bills stand out. 

What is California doing to reduce plastic waste?

From production to disposal, plastic waste threatens the environment and our health. Making plastic requires extracting and refining fossil fuels, increasing harmful emissions and releasing toxic substances into the air including known carcinogens and neurotoxins. When plastic bags are thrown away, they leach their toxic chemicals into the ground and break into smaller pieces called microplastics.  Microplastics have been found nearly everywhere, from the top of Mt. Everest to the bottom of the Mariana Trench – and even inside our bodies.

To reduce plastic waste, California passed a law to ban plastic grocery bags in 2014, but stores were still allowed to provide thicker, supposedly “reusable” plastic bags. Since then, plastic bag waste by weight has actually risen to an all-time high of 231 thousand tons a year. With data like this, we know plastic bags aren’t being widely reused. A recent CALPIRG study reaffirmed this, finding that only 2% of grocery shoppers returned to the store with plastic bags to reuse.

Senate Bill 1053, introduced by Senator Blakespear and approved by the Assembly last week, strives to tackle this senseless source of plastic waste by truly banning plastic grocery bags. SB 1053 will prohibit plastic bags from being provided at grocery store checkout. By turning off the plastic grocery bag tap, this bill will take an important step toward reducing plastic waste in California. 

What is California doing to tackle fashion waste?

Globally, the equivalent of one dump truck of clothing and textile waste is sent to a landfill or incinerator every second. California does not buck the clothing waste trend. Annually, the state throws out more than 1 million tons of clothing and other textiles.

Clothing waste clogs up our landfills and harms our environment. It also generates high carbon emissions. The fashion industry accounts for about 10% of total global emissions– more than aviation and shipping combined. Given so much clothing is made from materials derived from plastic, like polyester and nylon, clothing waste also generates extensive plastic waste and a pervasive spread of toxins. 

The Responsible Textile Recovery Act (SB 707) aims to tackle this issue. Introduced by Senator Newman, this bill would require clothing companies to create and fund a clothing recycling program. Such a program would ensure less clothing is sent to a landfill and more clothing is repaired or recycled. Moreover, given the bill shifts the costs of clothing waste management from state taxpayers to clothing companies, these companies will now have a financial incentive to be more conscious of their output, decreasing the fast fashion overproduction cycle. 

What is California doing to confront food waste?

The United States throws away about 35% of its total food supply every year. In California alone, more than 6 million tons of food are thrown out each year. 

Surely, some of the food that consumers, stores, and restaurants throw away could be used to feed hungry families. And, wasting that food means wasting resources – the land, energy, water, and care that went into producing that food was all for not. Finally, when food gets sent to landfills or burned, it contributes to significant greenhouse gas emissions. Food waste is responsible for about 4% of the US’s greenhouse gas emissions. 

Assembly Bill 660, championed by Assemblymember Irwin, seeks to chip away at food waste by standardizing food labeling in the state, requiring food items to have a “Best By” or “Use By” date to indicate quality or safety, respectively. Grocery stores would no longer be able to label their food items with only a “Sell By” date, which is a label that doesn’t tell consumers anything about the safety of the item. This would make it much clearer what food items are safe to eat and what needs to be thrown away.

Given that nearly 10% of wasted food is due to consumer confusion over how to interpret food date labels, AB 660 has great potential to reduce California’s food waste.  

What’s next for California’s waste reduction efforts?

While getting these important waste reduction bills  through the legislature is already an important win for California, we still need the Governor to sign these bills into law before we can truly proclaim, “victory!”