California banned single-use plastic carryout bags at large retailers with SB 270, signed in 2014 and upheld by voters in a 2016 referendum - the first statewide ban of its kind in the United States. Nearly a decade later, the state's own waste data showed something awkward: the amount of plastic bag material being thrown away per person had gone up, not down.

The loophole was in the definition

The 2014 law banned thin single-use bags but allowed stores to sell a thicker plastic bag for ten cents, provided it met a durability standard and was labelled reusable. In practice most shoppers treated that thicker bag exactly as they had treated the thin one: carry it home once, then throw it away. The result was a straight substitution of a heavier bag for a lighter one, which meant more plastic by weight entering the waste stream for the same shopping trip - the opposite of the law's intent, produced entirely by how a single word had been defined rather than by anyone breaking the rules.

Closing it, effective 2026

SB 1053, signed in September 2024, removes the thicker-bag option altogether. From 1 January 2026, grocery stores and large retailers in California may offer only recycled-content paper bags at checkout - no plastic carryout bag qualifies, however thick it is or however it is labelled. It is an unusual case of a legislature returning to a landmark environmental law a decade later for the specific purpose of closing the compromise that had been written into it to get it passed, and California's experience has since become the standard cautionary reference for every other state drafting a bag ban of its own.

Sources

Carryout Bags - CalRecycle
SB 1053 - California Legislative Information