California tried to ban plastic grocery bags. It did not work.

Nearly a decade ago, California became the first state in the United States to ban single-use plastic bags in an effort to tackle a persistent plastic waste problem.

Then came the reusable, heavy-duty plastic bags, offered to shoppers for ten cents. Designed to withstand dozens of uses and technically recyclable, many retailers considered them exempt from the ban.

But because they didn't look much different from the flimsy bags they replaced, many people didn't really reuse them. And although it had a recycling symbol on it, it turned out that few, if any, were actually recycled.

The unfortunate result: Californians threw away more plastic bags by weight last year than when the law was first passed, according to figures from CalRecycle, California's recycling agency.

Now lawmakers are trying to fix that. A new bill aims to ban all plastic bags presented at the checkout, including the heavy kind. (Shoppers could still pay for a paper bag.)

“It's time for us all to get rid of plastic bags together,” said Senator Ben Allen, a Democrat and sponsor of the bill.

Some say California's initial plastic bag ban was a well-intentioned but failed experiment, an environmental rule that backfired and inadvertently made matters worse. “We weren't concerned about the cost of these thicker bags at first,” said Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste, an advocacy group. “It just didn't seem like they were going to be what they ended up being.”

The pandemic, which raised concerns that carrying around reusable bags could spread the virus, led to “an explosion of these thicker plastic bags,” he said. Basically, people only used the thicker bags once.

The average time shoppers used a plastic bag? Twelve minutes, according to the bill's sponsors.

Some advocates say the initial ban would have been effective if properly enforced. The ban, which passed in 2014, allowed plastic bags to be sold to shoppers only if they were widely recycled in California.

“However, no bag manufacturer or retailer can prove that they have been recycled,” says Jan Dell, founder of The Last Beach Cleanup, a nonprofit organization. Over the past year, she has led an effort to sue retailers selling the thicker plastic bags, saying the original ban prohibited their sale.

Even if the new law passes, billions of bags would likely be sold before it takes effect in 2026, she said. “If the original law were enforced, we wouldn't have any of those bags today.”

Daniel Conway of the California Grocers Association said retailers had “followed the letter of the law.” He said he hoped new legislation would clear up the confusion over the fatter bags.

“We look at this as finishing what we started,” he said. “People are really starting to accept that they take reusable bags with them when they go to the supermarket.”

America's Plastic Makers, an industry group, said in a statement that manufacturers “have been steadfast in scaling a system where we remake new plastic from used plastic.” Policymakers in California needed to work with companies so that policies wouldn't “lead to worse environmental outcomes,” said Ross Eisenberg, president of the group.

Other states have learned from California's experience. In New York, which banned plastic bags at most store checkouts in 2020, environmentalists successfully opposed a proposed provision that would have allowed stores to continue offering thicker plastic bags. (There are countless examples of stores that didn't comply with the ban, they say.)

Hawaii, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Oregon, Vermont and New Jersey have also passed some semblance of a ban on plastic bags.

“Lawmakers at all levels need to be alert and know that plastic bag makers will use every opportunity to continue flooding the market with thicker plastic bags,” said Judith Enck, president of the advocacy group Beyond Plastics, and a former regional director. at the Environmental Protection Agency.

Despite the plastic bag setback, California remains at the forefront of efforts to curb plastic waste that is ubiquitous, fouling beaches and streams and also contaminating food and drinking water in the form of microplastics.

In 2021, California passed a “truth in advertising” law that prohibits companies from using the “chasing arrows” recycling symbol unless they can prove the material is actually recycled in most California communities. The following year, it passed a bill that shifted responsibility for recycling and waste management from local communities to plastic producers and packaging companies.

California has also turned its attention to fossil fuel companies, which produce the petroleum from which plastics are made. In 2022, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said opened an investigation in accusations that the industry played a role in misleading the public into thinking that recycling could solve the plastic waste crisis.

Industry groups have rejected the allegations and vowed to continue focusing on improving recycling. In the United States, the recycling rate was the same remained below 10 percent for decades.