New California Law Means a Big Change for Grocery Shoppers in 2026
In 2021, Californians threw away 230,000 tons of plastic grocery bags, according to CalRecycle. Toxic chemicals leach from plastic bags into our waterways and our food, and Americans consume a credit card’s worth of plastic each week.
These chemicals can have negative impacts on brain development and our reproductive health. Californians voted to ban single-use plastic bags in 2016, but a loophole allows grocery stores to provide thicker plastic bags at checkout and label them “reusable.”
Now plastic bag waste is at an all-time high.
Two bills in the Legislature, SB1053 and AB2236, would close the loophole and finally ban plastic grocery bags in California.
For the sake of our health, I urge Chronicle readers to contact their state legislators and urge them to support these bills. – Nicolas Riani, Oakland.
The issue of plastic bags goes back 2013, when the City of Mill Valley began enforcing them.
Two months after the Mill Valley City Council approved a plastic bag ban for all 13 stores that sell food within city limits, those stores are getting ready for the city to begin enforcing the new law on Jan. 1.