California’s war on modern conveniences just escalated.
One industry thought they were safe from the state’s regulatory crusade.
But Gavin Newsom declared war on common sense with one bad move that left Californians fuming.
California sues plastic bag manufacturers over recycling fraud claims
California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed lawsuits against three major plastic bag manufacturers, accusing them of deceiving consumers for years about whether their products could actually be recycled.¹
Bonta sued Novolex, Inteplast, and Mettler for allegedly violating environmental marketing claims, false advertising, and unfair competition laws.²
The companies control a major share of California’s plastic bag market, supplying billions of bags to grocery stores across the state.³
The lawsuit came after Bonta’s investigation found only two recycling facilities in California that claimed to accept plastic bags – and neither could confirm they actually recycled them.⁴
"Even when consumers have properly disposed of these bags, they’ve overwhelmingly not been recycled in California," Bonta said.⁵
"The thing is, producers knew, or should have known this fact years ago."⁶
Four other plastic bag manufacturers saw what was coming and settled with California before the lawsuit hit.
Revolution Sustainable Solutions, Metro Poly, PreZero US Packaging, and Advance Polybag agreed to stop selling plastic bags in California completely.
They collectively paid more than $1.75 million in penalties and legal fees.⁷
One of those companies, Advance Polybag, denied any wrongdoing but admitted settling made better business sense than fighting California’s legal machine.
"We stand firmly behind the quality and compliance of our products," said Rex Varn, the company’s chief operating officer.⁸
"However, after careful consideration of the costs, burdens, and uncertainties of prolonged litigation, we determined that resolving this matter was the most prudent business decision."⁹
Translation: they knew California’s government would bleed them dry in court costs even if they won.
The seven companies named in Bonta’s investigation control most of California’s plastic bag market.
They certified their bags met California’s recycling requirements and put the familiar "chasing arrows" symbol on billions of bags while consumers believed they were doing the right thing by recycling.
California’s decade-long plastic bag disaster created this mess
Here’s what Bonta and Newsom don’t want you to remember: California created this entire problem.
Back in 2014, California became the first state to ban single-use plastic bags with Senate Bill 270.¹⁰
Environmental activists celebrated it as groundbreaking legislation that would save the planet from plastic pollution.
Voters even upheld the ban through Proposition 67 in 2016.¹¹
The law had a loophole big enough to drive a garbage truck through.
Stores could still sell thicker "reusable" plastic bags to customers for 10 cents each.¹²
The bags were supposed to be reused multiple times and then recycled.
Consumers did exactly what anyone with common sense predicted – they used the thicker bags once and threw them away, just like the old thin bags.
The results were catastrophic.
California’s plastic bag waste didn’t decrease – it exploded.
According to the consumer advocacy group CALPIRG, the state discarded 157,385 tons of plastic bag waste in 2014 when the ban passed.¹³
By 2021, that number skyrocketed to 231,072 tons – a stunning 47% increase.¹⁴
The thicker "reusable" bags contained far more plastic than the original single-use bags they replaced.
California’s brilliant environmental policy made the plastic problem worse, not better.
The numbers got worse even as California’s population grew.
Per capita plastic bag waste jumped from 4.08 tons per 1,000 people in 2014 to 5.89 tons per 1,000 people in 2022.¹⁵
"We didn’t worry about the carve-out for these thicker bags in the early days," admitted Mark Murray, director of Californians Against Waste.¹⁶
"It just didn’t seem like they were going to be the thing that they ultimately became."¹⁷
The pandemic made things even worse as consumers worried about virus transmission through reusable bags and defaulted back to single-use habits with the thicker bags.¹⁸
Bonta’s systematic campaign targets entire plastic supply chain
Instead of admitting their 2014 policy disaster, California politicians doubled down.
Last September, Governor Newsom signed SB 1053 into law, which closes the "reusable bag" loophole and bans ALL plastic bags from grocery stores starting January 1, 2026.¹⁹
Stores will only be allowed to offer recycled paper bags at checkout.²⁰
That same week in September 2024, Bonta’s office sued oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, accusing the company of deceiving the public about plastic recycling for decades.²¹
"For decades, ExxonMobil has been deceiving the public to convince us that plastic recycling could solve the plastic waste and pollution crisis when they clearly knew this wasn’t possible," Bonta said.²²
The pattern is unmistakable.
Bonta launched his investigation into plastic bag manufacturers in November 2022, sending demand letters to seven companies requiring them to prove their recyclability claims.²³
Environmental activists had already filed lawsuits against retailers like Gelson’s Markets, Stater Brothers, and Walgreens in 2022 over the same recyclability issues.²⁴
Now with the lawsuit against the three remaining manufacturers, Bonta completed his three-year coordinated assault on the plastic industry.
Sue the retailers first, investigate the manufacturers, extract settlements from the cooperative ones, then file lawsuits against anyone who fights back.
Finally, go after the oil companies that produce the raw materials.
The state’s investigation revealed that despite manufacturers labeling bags with recycling symbols and providing instructions to return bags to store drop-off bins, very few if any recycling facilities in California actually process plastic bags.²⁵
A 2023 ABC News investigation tracked 46 bundles of plastic bags left in recycling bins at Walmart and Target stores – only four ended up at recycling facilities, while half went to landfills.²⁶
California regulators admitted in a 2023 study that only 30% of the state’s population had access to recycling options for reusable plastic film bags, far below the 60% requirement.²⁷
"CalRecycle has not identified facilities that recycle plastic bags in the state of California," the agency confirmed.²⁸
California’s lawfare campaign threatens businesses nationwide
The smart money already fled California’s hostile regulatory environment.
Four companies paid $1.75 million to settle and agreed to stop selling in California rather than face years of expensive litigation against the state’s unlimited legal resources.
That leaves three companies – Novolex, Inteplast, and Mettler – betting they can fight California’s Attorney General and win.
Bonta’s lawsuit alleges the companies "were unable to produce any documents with information regarding the quantity of plastic bags that are recycled at the producers’ own facilities."²⁹
These manufacturers followed California’s own law requiring bags to be labeled recyclable and meet certain thickness standards.
They put recycling symbols on the bags as state regulations required.
They certified compliance with SB 270 as the law demanded.
Now California is suing them for fraud because the state’s own recycling infrastructure doesn’t work.
Any business watching this should recognize the playbook.
California passes regulations requiring certain behaviors, companies comply with those regulations, California’s infrastructure fails to support the regulations, then California sues the companies for the government’s failure.
The stakes go far beyond plastic bags.
If California can extract millions in penalties from manufacturers who complied with state law, every industry is vulnerable to the same treatment.
Energy companies, food producers, chemical manufacturers – anyone with products California’s activists don’t like could face similar coordinated government attacks.
The plastic bag manufacturers aren’t the villains in this story.
California’s government created a catastrophic policy failure in 2014, made the plastic problem dramatically worse, then spent three years building legal cases against the companies that followed the state’s own regulations.
The real lesson here: in California, following the law doesn’t protect you from lawsuits if politicians need someone to blame for their policy failures.
¹ Wall Street Journal, "California Sues Plastic Bag Makers Over Recycling Claims," October 17, 2025.
² Ibid.
³ California Attorney General Press Release, "Plastic Bag Manufacturers Investigation Concludes," October 17, 2025.
⁴ Wall Street Journal, "California Sues Plastic Bag Makers Over Recycling Claims," October 17, 2025.
⁵ Ibid.
⁶ Ibid.
⁷ California Attorney General Press Release, "Plastic Bag Manufacturers Investigation Concludes," October 17, 2025.
⁸ Wall Street Journal, "California Sues Plastic Bag Makers Over Recycling Claims," October 17, 2025.
⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰ NPR, "California’s first plastic bag ban made things worse. Now it’s trying again," September 25, 2024.
¹¹ Ibid.
¹² Ibid.
¹³ Los Angeles Times, "California’s war on plastic bag use seems to have backfired," February 13, 2024.
¹⁴ Ibid.
¹⁵ Ibid.
¹⁶ Beyond Plastics, "California Tried to Ban Plastic Grocery Bags. It Didn’t Work," February 15, 2024.
¹⁷ Ibid.
¹⁸ Voice of San Diego, "California Is Trying to Fix Its Failed Plastic Bag Ban," December 19, 2024.
¹⁹ Packaging Dive, "California closes reusable plastic carryout bag loophole," September 23, 2024.
²⁰ Ibid.
²¹ NPR, "California’s first plastic bag ban made things worse. Now it’s trying again," September 25, 2024.
²² Ibid.
²³ California Attorney General Press Release, "Attorney General Bonta Demands Manufacturers of Plastic Bags Substantiate Recyclability Claims," November 8, 2022.
²⁴ Resource Recycling, "California lawsuits take aim at reusable, recycled-content bags," June 8, 2022.
²⁵ San Francisco Chronicle, "California says 4 plastic bag makers will stop sales in state in settlement," October 17, 2025.
²⁶ Mercury News, "Why plastic bags will be gone from California grocery stores by the end of the year," October 17, 2025.
²⁷ Resource Recycling, "Complete plastic bag ban clears California Senate," May 30, 2024.
²⁸ NPR, "California’s first plastic bag ban made things worse. Now it’s trying again," September 25, 2024.
²⁹ Plastics News, "California sues 3 plastic bag makers, 4 others pay $1.7M to settle recycling probe," October 17, 2025.
