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Lodi — A battle has been waging in Sacramento over whether beverage cartons — the ones used for milk, juice, broth, wine, even egg whites — should get the coveted chasing arrows recycling label.
Earlier this year, the state agency in charge of recycling, CalRecycle, determined the cartons were probably not eligible, because they weren’t being sorted and recycled by the vast majority of the state’s waste haulers, a requirement of the state’s “Truth in Recycling” law, Senate Bill 343.
Three months later, the agency reversed course.
The label is critical for product and packaging companies to keep selling in California as the state’s single-use packaging law goes fully into effect. It calls for all single-use packaging products to be recyclable or compostable by 2032. If they’re not, they can’t be sold or distributed in the state.
According to internal agency emails, documents and industry news releases, the change was prompted by data from the carton packaging industry’s trade group, the Carton Council of North America. The council had also announced it was investing in a carton recycling facility in Lodi.
The waste agency’s reversal incensed several waste experts, anti-plastic activists and environmentalists, who say cartons have limited, if any, value or recycling potential. They say the new industry-backed facility in Lodi is nothing more than a facade — one of several similar operations that have failed across the country. CalRecycle’s revised determination about the recyclability of the material, they say, is based on flawed methods that are easy to exploit.
Some say it’s just the latest example of Gov. Gavin Newsom and CalRecycle retreating from the state’s landmark single-use plastic law, and other ambitious anti-waste and anti-plastic laws that he and the waste agency once touted.
“The big picture here is that the governor and CalRecycle are creating loopholes,” said Jan Dell, a chemical engineer and founder of Last Beach Cleanup, an anti-plastic organization. “What we’ve got here is this Kingdom of California that wants to tell the world that ‘we’re the best in recycling, that recycling works, that we’re going to lead the way in recycling and build a circular economy.’ But, the reality on the ground is that this stuff’s not recyclable. It just isn’t.”
Yet others say what’s happened with carton material is exactly what the laws were designed to do: motivate plastic and packaging companies to make their packaging recyclable, or develop technologies and markets that will.…
Source: latimes.com
