‘Wild West’ with ‘No Sheriff’ California Planning to Crack Down on Retailers Over Recyclable Plastic Bags

California retailers have been hit by a wave of smash and grab thefts over the past couple of months, forcing some to close storefronts and limit hours. One would think state lawmakers would be scrambling to find a way to change their crazy laws and lack of criminal prosecution to help businesses but alas, it is California.

Instead, one state appointed commission is more concerned enforcing woke climate changes and pollution laws that they allege retailers are not following.

It seems that California’s plastic bag ban is not working according to plan according to a state appointed commission, calling California the “Wild West” with “no sheriff in town.”

The California Statewide Commission on Recycling Markets and Curbside Recycling has asked the California attorney general and regulator organization CalRecycle to crack down on retailers it claims are illegally labeling bags as recyclable.

Reuters reports:

The group has asked California to force retailers to strip these bags of the ubiquitous “chasing arrows” logo and the words “recycle” and “recyclable,” Reuters has learned. If successful, that move could make the sacks ineligible for sale at checkout counters throughout America’s most populous state. The commission also is taking aim at padded envelopes and packaging materials used for home delivery, and plastic films on some grocery items.

“It is a Wild West of recycling labeling in California and there is no sheriff in town,” said Sanborn, founding director of the National Stewardship Action Council, which works to cut product waste. The 16-member commission is comprised of waste industry executives, environmental advocates and public officials. It is tasked with advising CalRecycle and providing recommendations for improving the state’s recycling system.

The commission’s complaint comes as California grapples with what critics say has become a loophole in the state’s 2017 ban on single-use shopping bags. That legislation, the first of its kind in the nation, came amid fierce opposition from the plastics industry, which spent nearly $6 million in a failed bid to stop it, according to state lobbying records.

A compromise provision in the measure allowed retailers to sell reusable plastic bags for a minimum of 10 cents each. The legislation also states the bags must be capable of being recycled in California.

It’s that provision that has the recycling commission clamoring for enforcement by the state. In practice, converting soft plastics such a shopping bags and packaging films into new products is so cost-prohibitive that recyclers say no market exists for this material. Thus, these items are not widely accepted in curbside recycling programs across California. For that reason, the commission says, they should not be labeled “recyclable.”

I am sure retailers are shaking in their boots over this “crackdown.” Sounds like another reason to reconsider storefronts in California at all.

Leave it to the ridiculously woke lawmakers to focus on the really important issues of the day, like alleged plastic bag abuses, rather than protecting businesses and their citizens from out of control crime.