CalRecycle has picked the number that decides how much plastic California has to cut under the state’s 2022 landmark plastic law, and it is low.
It’s just one-third of what the state estimated in a 2024 report, and 20% lower than an initial number the industry announced in June.
The benchmark number, known as the source reduction baseline, is supposed to reflect how much single-use plastic was produced, distributed and sold in the state during 2023. Future reduction targets under the state’s single-use plastic law, or Senate Bill 54, are based on it. By 2032, plastic producers and distributors are required to cut the amount of single-use plastic sold in the state by 25%.
In 2024, the state estimated that Californians were sold 2.9 million tons of single-use plastic. Yet on Monday, CalRecycle adopted the industry’s latest number, 1.03 million tons — 20% lower than its June estimate of 1.29 million tons, and a third of the state’s estimate.
If the state’s initial estimate had held, roughly 725,000 tons of single-use plastic would vanish from state commerce in 2032. Instead, Californians will only see a reduction of 250,000 tons.
That’s the difference between every Californian using 37 pounds of single-use plastic less per year versus 13 pounds less.
Zoe Heller, director of CalRecycle, said the new number “reflects best available information.” She acknowledged that “not all producers have reported and not all producers have submitted accurate reporting.”
She said CalRecycle and the Circular Action Alliance — the organization that represents the industry under the single-use plastic law — will continue working to make sure data from all producers are included, and will update the baseline accordingly every year until 2030.
That won’t be in time for the first reduction target — an initial 10% — set to begin on Jan. 1. Instead of reducing 290,000 tons of single-use plastic by that first date, the state will only require producers to cut 100,000 tons.
The alliance did not respond to a request for comment.
Douglas McCauley, professor of ocean science at UC Santa Barbara and director of the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory, said the new report doesn’t provide much information about how the new number was calculated. And the little it does include only begs more questions.
For instance, the new report says the baseline update relied on reporting from only half of the alliance’s member companies.
“Does this mean CalRecycle expects the baseline to double in a future correction?” said McCauley. Or does it reflect only the reporting of large companies, which would suggest the number is unlikely to budge.
Companies who produce less than $1 million per year in revenue must register with the alliance, but their numbers are excluded from the baseline.
The new report also shows that 222 billion single-use plastic components were produced, sold or distributed in the state in 2023. This number is more than twice the alliance’s preliminary June analysis of 108 billion items; it also exceeds the state’s 2024 estimate of 189 billion items.
What these items are, or why the numbers have changed so drastically — doubling in number but weighing far less — is a head-scratcher, said McCauley. But “without being able to see their data all we can do is guess.”
Kyle Meisterling, a project scientist in McCauley’s lab at UC Santa Barbara, said the numbers are also likely to skew recycling rates. The lab also includes researchers at UC Berkeley.
In a 2025 report, the state estimated the recycling rates of various kinds of plastic. In the case of high-density polyethylene, or HDPE — the material used in most shampoo and detergent bottles — the recycling rate was estimated at 19%. Using the new numbers, the recycling rate would jump to 53% — even though not one more pound of HDPE was actually recycled.
State Senate Bill 54, the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act, was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2022. It was considered landmark legislation because it requires plastic and packaging companies to use less single-use plastic and, in addition to its ambitious cuts in single-use plastic, ensures that by 2032 all packaging is either recyclable or compostable.
Accumulating plastic waste is overwhelming waterways and oceans, sickening marine life and threatening human health.
The intent was not only to reduce single-use plastic but also to put the onus and cost of dealing with it on packaging producers and manufacturers, not consumers and local governments. It was supposed to incentivize companies to consider the fate of their products and spur innovation in material redesign.
Indeed, the law incorporates the industry — currently represented by the Circular Action Alliance — as a governing body for the reductions. The alliance writes the industry plan for meeting the law’s targets, reports producers’ data to the state and sets member recycling and reduction fees.
McCauley said Californians need to decide what they want to achieve through this law.
“Today, there is a significant amount of plastic polluting our beaches, our communities and our bodies,” he said. “This seemingly trivial set of baseline numbers will shape, almost more than anything else, how much of that unwanted plastic pollution” remains.
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