From farm to fork, we gotta have plastic
From farm to fork, we gotta have plastic
“I want to say one word to you. Just one word…Plastics. There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it.”
This is a slightly truncated quote from the 1967 film, “The Graduate,” starring a very young Dustin Hoffman. In this scene, his character, Benjamin, is offered unsolicited career advice by Mr. McGuire, a friend of his family. That scene has often popped into my head these last several years, as much to my chagrin as to Benjamin’s, but for different reasons.
As we have often reported, the California Legislature passed two bills in 2022 (SB 54 and SB 343) creating a regulatory program to reduce and eventually eliminate single use plastics, and to impose rules on the ways companies describe the recyclability of their packaging. All of it paid for by fees on companies using plastic packaging.
Our Sacramento team, especially Senior Director of California Government Affairs Gail Delihant, worked day and night with the legislative author, Senator Henry Stern, many other legislators and Newsom Administration officials to create a partial categorical exemption from these mandates for fresh produce.
To their credit, Stern and other legislators, as well as the Governor’s staff, heard our cautions about the requirements of meeting federal and industry food safety standards and guidance, as well as maintaining freshness for the consumer.
Though they limited this exemption to field packed produce (leaving out processed/fresh cut products, which remains a serious error), the end result was at least workable for much of our industry. Then the regulators charged with implementing these bills screwed it all up.
Actually, they (CalRecycle) screwed it up twice. After issuing a first draft of the proposed regulations that erased the fresh produce exclusion, CalRecycle—at the direction of Gov. Newsom—pulled the draft back with instructions to get it right. They didn’t. After yet another round of public comments, including detailed submissions from WG and industry experts including Kevin Kelly, CEO of Emerald Packaging, and even a semi-impromptu address to WG board members during our Sacramento meeting, the revised regulations still effectively force fresh produce companies to abandon plastic packaging by 2027. Despite the absence of viable alternatives that can meet essential food safety and perishability standards, CalRecycle’s current SB 54 regulations impose an extraordinarily high bar—one that all but requires companies to prove a negative.
As Kevin Kelly wrote in a recent op-ed published in CalMatters, “(T)he facts of the current supply chain can’t be wished away. And neglecting this reality will risk the health of Californians, while increasing food prices, limiting food selection and putting small businesses and family farmers out of operation.”
Despite our strong advocacy and expectations that Gov. Newsom might once again direct regulators to revisit the regulation and get it right, that intervention did not happen. WG therefore joined several other industry associations spanning the agriculture, manufacturing, retail and foodservice sectors in a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of one of the two laws that created this mess. If successful, the state Legislature will likely feel compelled to try again, and industry advocates will once again be called forward to try to shape a more realistic and workable law.
We are also examining federal strategies in light of the fact that seven states have passed differing versions of this scheme, and several more are likely to move forward soon. Needless to say, this creates an unworkable patchwork of expensive rules and prohibitions that will cause enormous headaches and higher prices for consumers. A single national standard—or even better, a single North American standard (which is
the goal of our work with our Canadian colleagues)—makes a lot of sense, provided it is economically and practically feasible.
In the meantime, “plastics” will never be far from our minds.
