California is suing three plastic bag manufacturers that officials say are violating state law by providing bags billed as recyclable when they are in fact not, state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced Friday.
The companies named in the lawsuit, Novolex Holdings LLC — one of the largest global food, beverage, and specialty packaging companies — Inteplast Group Corp. and Mettler Packaging LLC, were not able to produce any evidence the plastic bags they sold to California stores were recycled, according to the attorney general’s office.
At a news conference Friday, Bonta also announced a settlement with four plastic bag producers — Revolution, Metro Poly, PreZero and API — who have agreed to halt plastic bag sales in the state and collectively pay more than $1.7 million for allegedly selling plastic bags that could not be recycled. The settlement amount includes $1.1 million in civil penalties and more than $636,000 in attorneys fees and costs.
“Plastic bag companies have continued to distribute plastic bags that are not recyclable in California and mislead Californians about their bags recyclability,” Bonta said. “In fact, even when consumers have properly disposed of these plastic bags, they’ve overwhelmingly not been recycled in California and couldn’t have been recycled. The thing is, producers knew, or should have known this fact years ago.”
The result, Bonta said, is that billions of plastic carryout bags end up in landfills, incinerators, and the environment instead of being recycled.
All plastic bags that have been sold to consumers at retailers in California are not able to be recycled and should no longer be distributed. Stores will need to turn to paper bags or reusable canvas bags as the plastic bags are phased out, Bonta said.
The lawsuit is asking the court to not only enforce state consumer protection laws and SB 270, the state’s single-use plastic bag ban, but also force the companies to pay back the profits made from their bag sales plus additional penalties.
Novolex Holdings LLC, Inteplast Group Corp. and Mettler Packaging LLC did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.
Friday’s news conference comes on the heels of a years-long state investigation into the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries for their alleged role in causing and exacerbating a global crisis in plastic waste pollution, and for deceiving the public into thinking recycling could solve the problem of plastic waste.
Since California adopted the nation’s first ban on single-use plastic shopping bags in 2014, most retailers began providing thick, reusable plastic bags to customers that are supposed to be recyclable.
These bags are made from a material known as HDPE, which is thicker and heavier than the LDPE plastic bags that were handed out for decades. Although both materials can be recycled, they are generally not in residential and consumer settings, experts say.
In 2022, Bonta sent letters to six companies that manufacture plastic bags, demanding they substantiate their claims that their product was able to be recycled as a whole and at facilities in the state, a requirement for such bags sold in California.
What investigators discovered, he said, was that these thicker, reusable plastic bags were not accepted at a majority of recycling facilities.
While the bags display the “chasing arrows” recycling symbol and directs consumers to recycle them, only two out of the 69 recycling facilities surveyed as part of the state’s probe said they accepted the plastic bags. And those facilities could not confirm whether the bags were ultimately recycled, according to the attorney general’s office.
Roughly 48 million tons of plastic waste is generated in the United States each year and only 5% to 6% is recycled with the rest incinerated or ending up in landfills, according to the Department of Energy.
“We have to think about the cost to the environment, to our future, to our climate, to our planet that plastic bags that are not recyclable have been creating as they they choke us in our waterways and our oceans and our streams,” Bonta said. “There’s a massive cost for that.”
Times staff writer Susanne Rust contributed to this report
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