The sweeping regulations, finalized at the start of the month, put producers in a bind that has no obvious solution. Plastic clamshell containers, for instance, protect berries from being crushed and keep them fresher, longer until they reach a refrigerator. Plastic producers say there’s simply no substitute — yet under the new rules, they’ll have to find one. 

Last week, two environmental groups — the Natural Resources Defense Council and Californians Against Waste — said they plan to take California to court. Their argument: the state’s rules actually break the law by allowing recycling methods that create a lot of toxic waste, and by letting some plastics slip through the rules entirely. On the other side, plastic manufacturers say the rules go too far and will make products more expensive for shoppers.

Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat from coastal Los Angeles County who authored the plastic waste law, said the program still “massively moves the needle on this really major problem” — even if the process was messy. “This was the product of a compromise, and it was not perfect, and everybody walked away from the table, you know, unhappy about various aspects,” Allen said.

“California is the United States, but 30 years in the future,” said Joe Árvai,  director of the University of Southern California’s Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies. “What’s happening now is emblematic of trends that we are seeing worldwide … and the U.S. needs to adapt in the way that those countries are adapting in order to remain globally competitive.”

Less plastic, more recycling 

For decades, the burden of reducing, reusing and recycling plastic waste has fallen on consumers. Once a consumer buys a product, they decide what happens to it — whether it ends up in the garbage can or the recycling blue bin — and their tax dollars fund recycling systems we have today.  

In 2022, California’s landmark Senate Bill 54, the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act, shifted that responsibility to businesses. The regulations outline what materials are covered by the law and who counts as a “producer” of plastic waste.  

The new regulations are a huge milestone, said Anja Brandon, director of U.S. plastics policy for the Ocean Conservancy. “There’s plenty more steps on this journey, but I’m just really excited that we are going to start making real progress,” she said. 

The law applies to plastic food service ware and almost all single-use packaging — from the plastic wrap around large pallets of products shipped to retailers to a tube of toothpaste and the cardboard box around it.  

To carry out the law, the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery appointed the Circular Action Alliance, a nonprofit that helps states carry out extended producer responsibility mandates, as the organizing body for producers. The alliance is responsible for coming up with  a plan to meet the law’s goals. 

Producers — defined as companies that make more than $1 million in sales and produce products packaged in plastic or own brands under which those products are sold — must join the organization and pay fees to fund waste management. They can meet the law’s requirements by using less plastic, finding alternative materials, or investing in recycling infrastructure.

“The biggest challenge is the scale and coordination required to modernize a complex recycling system across a state as large and diverse as California,” said Sheila Estaniel, a spokesperson for the Circular Action Alliance, in an email. 

California’s requirement that businesses reduce single-use plastic altogether makes it one of the strongest plastic waste laws in the country. It also goes further than other similar laws because it requires plastic producers to pay $5 billion over a decade to address the environmental damage their products have caused to communities — though the state doesn’t expect to start distributing those funds until 2027 at the earliest.

Watered down rules

The plastic waste rules have had a rocky road to implementation. 

In 2024, CalRecycle developed a first draft of regulations detailing what plastic the law covers and what producers must do. The draft expired before CalRecycle finalized it. In 2025, Gov. Gavin Newsom directed regulators to rewrite the rules — a move that some advocates say say food and agriculture lobbyists pushed for.

The result was a second draft that carved out a broad exclusion for plastics used for food and agriculture purposes, covering products under the jurisdiction of the FDA and USDA, such as packaging for fresh produce and supplements. Advocates said the exclusion gutted the law.

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Let’s see if I have a grip on saving the environment. Due to plastic bags polluting the environment and causing damage to sea life, we Californians have to take our own bags to stores selling food. If you forget your bags when shopping at a food market you may purchase a bag for a dime. But that bag is made of what? PLASTIC! But if you purchase products from merchants not selling food, your purchases are put in a plastic bag. DUH!

Dine in restaurants can no longer automatically give you a plastic straw because they, too, are damaging the sea life and polluting the environment. But drive-through restaurants can still provide you with a plastic straw. Now which eating out scenario is most likely not to dispose of its drink cup and straw properly? The drive-through, right? So what’s the point here?

Add in the disposal of cigarette butts!

BUT ——The homeless are not contributing to polluting the environment? What about the attracting and breeding of rodents as in RATS? No pollution or danger to have human feces and urine on streets? None whatsoever in hypodermic needles laying in streets? Needles not disposed of properly?

The worse legislation passed was the legislation of “POT” sales and usage. Marijuana is still a mind altering drug. Now some cities are offering safe places to shoot one’s self up with heroin or other injectable drugs. Is this not enabling drug use? Are those needles going to be disposed of properly?

Where is the fine line between plastic bags, plastic straws pollution versus human waste, hypodermic needles polluting the environment.

Just curious

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According to county officials, the meeting will put attendees on track to serve as volunteers during quarterly workshops countywide intended to supply residents with an understanding of recycling and composting methods and programs that promote a cleaner, greener environment. “Volunteers can also choose to attend extra training and volunteer more hours to become certified as a master composter, “Once a volunteer reaches master
composter status, the volunteer is allowed to teach classes on their own or work with schools and community gardens as a composting mentor.”
Moreland said volunteers are “integral” to the success of the county’s environmental programs.

More information is available at http://www.rcwaste.org/volunteer.
Interested parties may also contact the Department of Waste Resources at 951-486-3200.

The post Volunteers Needed to Demonstrate Composting, Recycling Techniques appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.