On October 17, 2025, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced enforcement actions against seven plastic bag manufacturers for allegedly violating state environmental and consumer protection laws through explicit and implicit claims that plastic bags sold in California were recyclable. This comes at the conclusion of an investigation of these plastic bag manufacturers initiated by the Attorney General in 2022. The actions include a settlement with four companies and a lawsuit against three others.
The enforcement actions stem from California’s SB 270, which bans single-use plastic carryout bags and requires that reusable plastic bags be certified as recyclable in California’s own recycling centers. California’s Environmental Marketing Claims Act (EMCA) incorporates the FTC Green Guides’ standards, requiring that “recyclable” claims be qualified unless recycling facilities are available to a substantial majority (60%) of consumers or communities where the item is sold. California’s definition of “recyclable” also goes beyond the Green Guides’ standard, requiring that products not just be accepted for recycling at a majority of recycling programs, but are in fact recycled.
In the complaints against these seven manufacturers, the Attorney General alleges that the companies falsely certified their plastic bags as recyclable when, in practice, they were not recyclable within the state. The Attorney General supports this assertion with a statewide survey of waste processing and recycling facilities; that survey revealed that only two out of 69 facilities claimed to accept plastic bags, and even then, the facilities could not confirm that the bags were in fact recycled. Based on this evidence, manufacturers’ representations that their bags were recyclable in the state could not be substantiated by actual California recycling practice.
The complaints each allege that these manufacturers violated four California laws:
- SB 270, by selling bags that did not meet California’s recyclability standards;
- California’s EMCA, by making misleading environmental marketing claims and by failing to substantiate those claims;
- California’s False Advertising Law (FAL) and Unfair Competition Law (UCL), by engaging in deceptive labeling and marketing practices.
The settlement and proposed consent judgment, which resolve claims against Revolution Sustainable Solutions LLC, Metro Poly, PreZero US Packaging LLC, and Advance Polybag, impose civil penalties and attorney’s fees ranging from $65,000 to $977,500 and include injunctive terms requiring the companies to stop selling plastic carryout bags to stores in California on or before dates ranging from October 20, 2025, to January 1, 2026.
The lawsuit, filed in the San Francisco County Superior Court of California, names Novolex Holdings LLC, Inteplast Group, and Mettler Packaging LLC as defendants, and seeks civil penalties, disgorgement, and injunctive relief.
These actions reflect California’s heightened scrutiny of environmental marketing claims, particularly those involving recyclability. They also underscore California’s requirements that environmental claims must be substantiated not only in theory but in practice; “recyclable” claims in the state must be supported not only by evidence that the product can be recycled, but that it is recycled.
SB 1053 will replace SB 270 as of January 1, 2026. That new law will ban all plastic carryout bags, including “reusable” plastic bags like the ones at issue in these enforcement actions.