California’s push to shrink the amount of plastic in everyday packaging is running into a last-minute political fight in Sacramento, with more than two dozen state lawmakers now asking legislative leaders to hit pause on fees tied to the state’s ambitious plastics law.
In a letter sent Wednesday to Senate President Pro Tempore Monique Limón and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, 23 Assembly Democrats and state Sen. Melissa Hurtado asked for a two-year delay in assessing and collecting fees under Senate Bill 54, California’s sweeping plastic-reduction law. The lawmakers want time to negotiate a broader overhaul of the program next session and to build in more legislative oversight of how it’s carried out.
The request comes as the clock winds down on this year’s legislative session and as tension builds over how the law is being rolled out statewide — tension that could eventually be felt by shoppers across the Inland Empire and the rest of California.
Signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom four years ago, SB 54 set an ambitious target: cutting non-recyclable, non-compostable plastic packaging by 25 percent by 2032. To get there, the state handed responsibility for designing an implementation plan to a nonprofit called the Circular Action Alliance. That group estimated the effort would cost roughly $17.2 billion over five years and has asked regulators for a three-year exemption from the law’s source-reduction deadline.
But as the rollout moves forward, a growing chorus of business groups is questioning both the price tag and the amount of scrutiny the alliance actually faces.
An industry-funded study suggests the true cost to Californians could run far higher than state estimates — as much as $683 to $948 per household annually, compared to the state’s original projection of about $190. That gap, if it holds up, could translate into higher shelf prices for everything from shampoo to salad greens.
The state’s recycling department, CalRecycle, declined to sit down for an interview but defended the law in a written statement, saying it’s designed with consumers in mind and pushes manufacturers to rethink how they package products in the first place.
“Californians are facing rising costs and pollution from increasingly complex packaging that wasn’t designed for the recycling systems local governments, ratepayers, and the state developed and funded over the past four decades,” said CalRecycle Director Zoe Heller. She described the law’s phase-in as “a dial, not a switch,” giving companies room to adjust packaging design, invest in recycling infrastructure and scale back single-use plastics over time.
Questions About Accountability
In June, the Circular Action Alliance released its fee schedule, laying out what individual companies will owe under the program. According to the Dairy Institute of California, a trade group representing milk processors and dairy manufacturers, those fees could top $10 million annually for some businesses.
Dairy Institute Executive Director Katie Davey argues the alliance operates with far less accountability than a typical government agency would.
“They do not have to go through an audit by the state auditor. They’re not subject to the (California open government law) Brown Act. They’re not subject to public records requests. The Legislature does not approve their budget and does not approve how many employees they need, or how many fees they can charge,” Davey said.
As a private nonprofit, the alliance is indeed exempt from the Brown Act and public records laws, though documents it files with CalRecycle or other government bodies could still be subject to disclosure. CalRecycle spokesperson Lance Klug said the agency must sign off on the group’s fee schedule and implementation plan and retains authority to audit its performance, adding that the law includes safeguards to ensure fees and budgets stay reasonable.
“Our role is to implement the framework established by SB 54 under CalRecycle’s oversight,” said Larine Urbina, a spokesperson for the Circular Action Alliance, adding that the group is not responsible for setting state policy.
Davey said the accountability gap extends into enforcement as well. Companies that fail to meet targets will be hit with so-called “malus fees,” which are then used to reward businesses that do comply — but the alliance has yet to disclose what those penalty fees will actually be.
Shane Gusman, a lobbyist for the Teamsters union, echoed the concern. “They’re a wholly independent nonprofit organization that has no oversight. That’s part of the problem,” he said. The Teamsters originally supported the plastics law in hopes it would create jobs, but Gusman said the union is now worried the fee structure could ultimately hurt workers instead.
Not long after the fee schedule was published, Davey joined a coalition that included the California Restaurant Association, the California League of Food Producers, the American Forest and Paper Association and the Print Creative Alliance to commission an independent study challenging CalRecycle’s cost projections. That analysis argued the state’s 2025 estimate of $21 billion in total implementation costs — about $190 per household annually — relied on “idealized assumptions that fail to capture real-world costs and complications the regulations will create.” The industry study instead pegs the cost between $35 billion and $58 billion, with expenses expected to climb further once the program is fully in place.
Klug countered that CalRecycle’s earlier figures were only estimates to begin with. “The actual costs will be determined by producer choices,” he said, noting that expenses will depend heavily on the materials and infrastructure companies choose to use.
Growers Warn of Unintended Consequences
For agricultural producers, the toughest part of the law may be the requirement to cut plastic use by a quarter by 2032 — a mandate that could force a shift toward reusable dishware in restaurants and paper-based packaging for fresh produce.
Business groups say they support the underlying goals but argue the timeline is unrealistic. Casey Creamer, president of the California Fresh Fruit Association, pointed to food safety as a major concern. Paper-based containers for items like berries, he said, don’t allow for the same airflow as plastic clamshells, which can cause produce to spoil faster. Switching to heavier materials like glass or cardboard also adds transportation costs.
“We just don’t want to force something out and not be able to deliver a fresh, healthy commodity, or create a situation that has more significant or adverse environmental concerns just because we look at plastics and packaging in a silo,” Creamer said.
Environmental advocates, however, are firmly opposed to any delay. “All of us pay for plastic pollution through higher garbage bills and clean-ups of polluted beaches and waterways, not to mention the damage to our environment and our health,” said Nick Lapis, advocacy director for Californians Against Waste.
State Sen. Ben Allen, the Los Angeles County Democrat who authored the original legislation, was blunt in his response to the push for delay. “This 11th-hour Hail Mary is only trying to maintain status quo and avoid due responsibility, throwing years of good-faith negotiations, and affordability and sustainability improvements out the window,” he said in a statement.
Will Grocery Prices Actually Rise?
Whether the law is already nudging up grocery prices is difficult to prove. Creamer suggested some businesses may already be building anticipated fees into their pricing. Federal data show grocery prices dipped slightly in July compared to June, though year-over-year prices continue to climb — and that climb appears to be picking up speed, according to Richard Volpe, a consumer-price expert at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Neither the USDA nor the Bureau of Labor Statistics has released August figures yet, and no current data separates the plastics law’s specific impact from broader inflation trends.
Volpe said grocers, who typically operate on razor-thin profit margins, will likely pass added costs on to shoppers eventually — but probably not all at once. “It will not happen overnight,” he said. “And it will still be relatively small, mostly on the order of pennies on the dollar.”
Industry representatives argue those small increases will add up over time. “If someone’s even on the cusp of food insecurity and they’re looking at $1,000 more a year, that’s pushing them over the food cliff,” said Nate Rose, a spokesperson for the California Grocers Association.
For the Teamsters, the concern isn’t just about consumer prices — it’s about jobs, too. “It has been morphed into something that is going to cost California consumers a substantial amount of money at a time when I don’t know if we need to spend thousands more on groceries,” Gusman said. “That also has an impact on the workforce.”
Original source: CalMatters
