Industry groups are pushing hard to kill California’s plastic law. So far, they’ve whiffed.
California’s embattled single-use plastics law is still alive — despite multiple lawsuits, political pressure and widespread ad campaigns to destroy it.
While leaders in the packaging industry wait to see how the courts respond to legal challenges lodged against the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act, or Senate Bill 54, several have decided to tackle the law on the political front — lobbying legislators and filling inboxes and mailboxes with messages and mailers urging Californians to turn against the law.
Leading the blitz is a seven-month-old coalition, Californians for Affordable Packaging. The only stated goal on the organization’s website is to “pause and replace” the single-use plastics law. The law is intended to reduce single-use plastics in the state and make all packaging material and single-use foodware items recyclable or compostable by 2032.
It is unclear who is behind the organization, although officials from the Dairy Institute of California, the California League of Food Producers and the California Restaurant Assn., among others, sit on its board.
“Californians agree on the goal: less plastic pollution and a recycling system that works. The question is whether SB 54, as written, can deliver it,” said William Valentine, a spokesman for the packaging coalition.
In June, the same month the organization registered as a lobbying firm with the state, it published an economic report suggesting the plastics law ultimately would cost California households more than $1,000 each per year, and the state $78 billion to put it into effect. Last year, state economists put the household number closer to $100 — ranging from $57 to $190 — and suggested after the initial rollout, people would actually save money. They estimated it would cost the state $21 billion to implement the program.
Environmentalists and lawmakers agree the new law will be expensive for large businesses that have to reduce their packaging or find alternative materials that can be recycled or composted.
At the new packaging coalition, one lobbyist is Rachel Wagoner, the former head of CalRecycle, who helped draft, negotiate and usher in the regulations for the single-use plastics bill. She left the waste agency in March 2024, and was quickly enveloped in scandal after accepting employment as chief executive of the industry group representing plastics producers and packagers under the law.
An ethics complaint was filed against her in February 2025, and she left that group three months later.
But according to lobbying disclosures, she’s back trying to dismantle the law and since July of last year, has been paid close to $150,000 by groups intent on destroying not only the single-use plastics law, but other state recycling laws too. Her lobbying disclosure shows she has been working for the packaging coalition, the Dairy Institute of California, and Eastman Chemical — a leader in chemical recycling, a form of plastic recycling forbidden under the plastic law.
Wagoner did not respond to a request for comment.
Despite this baggage, the economic report her new organization drafted has concerned lawmakers worried about affordability.
Last month, 22 Democratic Assembly members and one state senator wrote to legislative leaders asking them to pause the law over economic concerns raised by the new report.
“We asked the Legislature to revisit this statute to find ways to build an implementable circular economy responsibly and affordably for all Californians,” Valentine said.
The request to lawmakers went unheeded, but the lobbyists and groups are likely to keep pushing when they return to the capital in December.
Although the law’s fate is still unclear, last week a federal judge in Oregon ruled against plaintiffs in a case similar to the one brought against California’s plastics law in June, by 17 out-of-state attorneys general and the National Assn. of Wholesaler-Distributors.
The judge said the law did not violate the Constitution and the state could continue its goal of reducing single-use plastic waste.
In Other Climate News
Seems climate change has recently taken a back seat in Democrats’ political messaging, according to this story from the Associated Press.
During President Trump’s first term, Democrats spoke about climate change a lot. They used it to rally young voters, fuel protests and to make sweeping demands for remaking the economy with proposals such as the Green New Deal.
But now, not so much — despite the fact that evidence that Earth’s changing climate is wreaking havoc across the globe.
Then here on the edge of the Pacific, The Times reported Monday that California coastal communities are bracing for the arrival of El Niño, where rising sea levels and increasingly intense storms have already struck beaches, cliffs, roads and coastal infrastructure.
In Los Angeles County, workers have been “frantically building an emergency revetment — placing rocks on the coast to armor the shoreline against the waves” to shore up a Malibu roadway located on a narrow strip of coastline between the ocean and a cliff.
In other conservation news
The killing of mule deer on Catalina Island can proceed.
On Tuesday, a judge denied a request from hunting groups and concerned citizens to pause the controversial plan pending the outcome of a legal challenge.
The Catalina Island Conservancy, which manages 88% of the island, announced last year that it would use contracted hunters to shoot the invasive deer over four to five years as part of an ecosystem restoration plan.
In Vermont, federal researchers are hoping to save American elm trees by infecting young saplings with the fungal disease that has nearly exterminated the tall, once prevalent, East Coast trees.
The infected saplings are the descendants of trees that survived the blight. The hope is to grow a population of genetically diverse and resistant trees that can be planted in forests, riverbanks and backyards.
In other environment news
A parcel of land in Yosemite National Park could become privately owned.
According to administration officials, members of Congress and documents reviewed by The Times, the Trump administration is considering a deal that would allow a private commercial developer the right to build a road through part of the park, as well as give the developer future development rights on the parcel.
In exchange, the landowner would trade land from some other, unidentified parcel that is beneficial to the U.S.
This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.
On the Boiling Point Podcast this week, hear Times water reporter Ian James with the latest on the severely stressed Colorado River.
