Plastic bag makers are moving fast to trash California’s pioneering ban on their products.

Gov. Jerry Brown, D-Calif., signed legislation Tuesday to ban stores from distributing “single-use” plastic bags and the prohibition will take effect for grocery stores and pharmacies on July 1, 2015, unless opponents submit more than 500,000 signatures by late December.

The American Progressive Bag Alliance plans to do exactly that. The industry group promptly filed a proposed referendum that would postpone implementation of the ban until November 2016, when voters would decide its fate.

Both sides say the bag-makers will likely succeed in at least stalling the measure.

“I believe they will spend whatever it takes to get it on the ballot,” says Democratic state Sen. Alex Padilla, a co-author of the ban. “The plastic bag industry will continue to fight tooth and nail to reap tremendous profit off the back of California’s environment.”

A person working on the anti-ban campaign tells U.S. News the corporate alliance, which says it supports 30,800 jobs – about 2,000 of them in California, will spend up to $3 million on paid canvassers in the next three months.



Signature gathering will likely begin next week, after the state attorney general approves a ballot title and summary. An experienced firm, National Petition Management, is contracted to do the legwork.

Previewing what will likely be a 2016 ballot fight, the industry representative argues thin plastic bags are convenient for customers and actually better for the environment than plastic bags thicker than 2.25 millimeters, which would still be allowed.

Thin bags are recyclable, the ban opponent says, alleging the true motivation for the ban is to enrich grocers, who will sell paper and "reusable" plastic bags for a minimum of 10 cents.

Padilla says voters won’t be convinced by those arguments and will uphold the ban if it hits the ballot.

“Plastic bags technically can be recycled, but in reality, they are not,” he says, and instead end up in landfills or bodies of water. In cities that have already adopted bans, he says, residents have modified their behaviors and turned to reusable bags.