Styrofoam coffee cups, plates, clamshell take-out containers, and other foodservice items made from expanded polystyrene plastic are available on the shelves of restaurants and stores, despite their inactivity on January 1st.
The final at Redwood City’s Smart was filled with foam plates, bowls and cups for sale Thursday. Want to buy these products online? It was fine to log on to Amazon.com and find a variety of foam food products (DART Insulated Hot/Cold Foam Cups, or Daily 10.25 inch plates) that can be shipped to your California address.
It’s the same as Katom, a restaurant supply store based in Kodak, Tennessee.
Smart and Final and Catom did not respond to requests for comment. An Amazon spokesperson said the company will investigate the issue.
The expanded polystyrene ban is part of the Single Use Plastics Act, Senate Bill 54, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the law in 2022.
And although the complete law is currently in the frontier, one part is in effect. The de facto ban on so-called expanded polystyrene, a soft, white, foaming material commonly used in take-out food service items.
Nick Lapis, director of Advocacy at Californians Again Again Again Again Again Again, was one of many stakeholder organizations who worked with lawmakers to create SB 54, and said the law was written in a way that would enable the polystyrene ban, even if the remaining packages failed.
“So it’s still effective whether or not the rest of the bill has regulations,” he said.
Calrecycle, the state waste agency, is tasked with overseeing and enforcing the law.
Calrecycle spokesperson Melanie Turner was asked why Styrofoam foodservice products are still widely available. Her agency says she is identifying companies that are considering ways to produce, sell and distribute products in the state and “help them to comply with the law.”
SB 54 asked plastics and packaging companies to reduce one used plastic packaging by 25%, ensuring that 65% of its materials are recyclable and 100% are recyclable or compostable.
The law also requires packaging producers to bear the cost of the final life of their products (via recycling, composting, landfills, or exports) and find ways to achieve that.
In December, representatives from the plastics, packaging and chemical recycling industry urged the governor to abandon regulations, suggesting that it was unattainable as they were written and could cost about $300 a year for Californians to implement it.
Their pressure campaign was joined by Rachel Wagoner, former director of Calleccikul and director of the Circular Action Alliance, a coalition of the plastics and packaging industry. Newsom has passed the final rules and regulations deadlines for the bill without implementation, and has ordered Calrecycle to begin the process.
However, the bill’s stand-alone styrofoam provider — which doesn’t require the finalization of rules and regulation — makes clear that producers of expanded polystyrene food service ware “shall not sell, offer for sale, distributed, or import into the state” these plastic products unless the producer can demonstrate recycling rates of no less than 25% on Jan. 1, 2025, 30% by Jan. 1, 2028, 50% by Jan. 1, 2030 and 65% by 2032.
And on January 1st, its recycling target was not met and is prohibited. (Nationwide expanded recycling rate of polystyrene range).
CalRecycle or Newsom’s Office have not announced approval for the ban. It leaves plastic dealers, sellers, environmental groups, waste carriers and lawmakers uncertain about their willingness to enforce state government laws.
“I don’t understand why the administration can’t make a statement saying that,” Lapis said. “At this point, silence from the administration only presents additional legal liability for businesses that don’t realize they’re breaking the law.”
During the Senate Senate budget hearing Thursday, lawmakers asked directors of Kalepa and Karlek about their lack of action regarding the ban on polystyrene. Calrecycle is a department within Karepa.
“Why didn’t Cal Recycle take steps to implement the provisions of SB 54 dealing with the sale of expanded polystyrene?” Sen. Ben Allen (D Santa Monica), sponsor of the bill and author, asked Calepa’s secretary, Jana Garcia. “As you know, this product does not meet the strict requirements under SB 54, so there are steps that need to be taken to ban sales.”
Garcia replied that her agency and Calleccikul “we need to lean towards even more people, especially at this point.”
Yandell, founder and president of Laguna Beach-based environmental group Last Beach Cleanup, said the ongoing presence of polystyrene on store shelves throughout the state highlights one of the major issues in the law.
This “proves that Cal Recycle cannot implement and implement a large scope of SB 54 in all packages,” she said in an email, saying “the entire law needs to be repealed to save taxpayers’ money and pass and implement strict bans on worst plastic contamination items.”
Turner said in an email that the agency could provide “compliance assistance,” and that it would launch an investigation and issue a notice of violation.
It said 2.9 million tons of one-legged plastic and 171.4 billion disposable plastic ingredients were sold and offered for sale or distributed in 2023 in California.
Disposable plastics and plastic waste are more widely considered and have been seen as environmental growth in recent decades, with accumulation being overwhelmed, marine life and threatened.
On March 7, Newsom stopped the landmark Plastic Waste Act from moving forward – rejecting rules and regulations written by his own staff – from over two years of effort, negotiations, input, environmental groups, waste carriers and other lawmakers from the plastics and packaging industry.
