A pair of bills designed to drastically reduce plastic waste in California passed the Senate and Assembly appropriations committees on Thursday.
The bills, SB 54 and AB 1080, would require manufacturers and retailers to reduce plastic packaging by 75 percent by 2030. That would mean switching to recyclable or compostable materials or getting rid of packaging altogether. After that date, single-use plastic packaging would be banned.
The legislation is authored by Senator Ben Allen of Santa Monica and Lorena Gonzalez-Fletcher of San Diego. It will face a vote in the full legislature in the coming months.
Guests:
Jill Replogle, KPCC’s Orange County reporter; she’s been following the story; she tweets
Jeffrey Hollender, CEO of the American Sustainable Business Council, a network of businesses and business associations committed to sustainability; co-founder and former CEO of Seventh Generation, which sells sustainable household and personal care products; adjunct professor of sustainability and social entrepreneurship at New York University’s Stern Business School; he tweets
Tim Shestek, senior director of state affairs for the American Chemistry Council, an association of chemical and plastic manufacturers; he tweets