SACRAMENTO — State lawmakers were on the verge of passing landmark bills to combat plastic pollution when a new advocacy group with a seemingly innocuous name arrived.

Californians for Recycling and the Environment, as the nonprofit calls itself, campaigned against the legislation in social media posts and through lobbyists. The group said that if the bills to require that far less plastic go to landfills passed, “Californians (would) have to prepare for a future without toothpaste, baby formula and dog food.”

The nonprofit group, according to corporate filings, wasn’t created by Californians or environmentalists. It’s headed by two top executives from Novolex, a South Carolina-based company that is one of the largest producers of plastic packaging and bags in the country.

Philip Rozenski and Christopher Klein, Novolex’s vice president of public affairs and its general counsel, respectively, formed Californians for Recycling and the Environment this summer.

Supporters of the bills said the group’s arguments were examples of how the plastics industry worked, often in misleading ways, to kill the recycling effort last month.

“It’s wonderfully Orwellian,” state Sen. Ben Allen, who co-sponsored the recycling legislation, said of the group’s name and tactics. “They ultimately were more interested in trying to throw monkey wrenches into the bill.”

Rozenski said criticism of the effort is unfounded because Novolex is a “California company,” with four manufacturing plants in the state, and shares Allen’s goal of wanting to increase recycling.

He said the company, with its coalition with Californians for Recycling and the Environment, was trying to make the bills workable for industry.

“We’ve asked to help,” Rozenski said. “We want to make this bill a success.”

Two identical bills were the targets of the lobbying effort: SB54 by Allen, D-Santa Monica, and AB1080 by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego. The measures would have required the state to cut the amount of packaging and single-use foodware, like cups, straws and utensils, that goes to landfills by 75% by 2030.

Lawmakers adjourned for the year Sept. 13 without passing either measure. Earlier versions of the bills had passed in the Assembly and Senate, but lawmakers failed to act on the final, amended measures before time ran out in the legislative session.

Allen said multiple factors killed the bills, not just opposition from the plastics lobby. Notably, he said, lawmakers were under a time crunch on their final night of the session.

“If any one of these things had gone a little better for us in the last days, we would have gotten the bill through,” he said.

Still, environmentalists said California’s failure to broadly take on the spread of plastic pollution — when the European Union and Canada have advanced sweeping cutbacks — speaks to the industry’s power.

“I’ve watched the plastic industry’s ability to distort the truth and confuse lawmakers,” said Judith Enck, founder of the advocacy group Beyond Plastics and former regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“There’s a lack of urgency here that troubles me,” she said. “It should bother every elected official that there’s 9 million tons of plastic going into the ocean every year.”

Californians for Recycling and the Environment criticized the bills in social media posts and on its website, www.recycle4ca.org. One post read, “We need tangible solutions that fix our recycling system, NOT strain it.” It added that it’s time for SB54 to be taken “‘to the trash bin’ and our legislators to come up with feasible, long-term solutions.”

The group hired a team of lobbyists and worked the hallways at the Capitol. Rozenski said he also flew into Sacramento for meetings with several lawmakers.

Opponents argued that the legislation would have killed jobs in many industries, from food processing to agriculture, and imposed unrealistic mandates on manufacturers and retailers. They also said many communities don’t have the infrastructure to handle an influx of recyclables.

Reed Galen, a political operative who lives in Park City, Utah, is Californians for Recycling and the Environment’s executive director. He said the group wants to meet with sponsors of the bills to reach a compromise that would increase recycling without limiting products people need.

“These materials affect every Californian, every day of their life,” said Galen, who previously worked as a deputy campaign manager for former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. “We want to find ways to work collaboratively with them.”

While several groups opposed the bills, Allen said it was clear Californians for Recycling and the Environment was among those that “just don’t want to make progress.”

Novolex previously spent more than $1 million on a failed attempt in 2016 to overturn California’s ban on single-use plastic grocery bags. It led an opposition group called the American Progressive Bag Alliance.

Its latest political endeavor in the state, Californians for Recycling and the Environment, is a nonprofit formed in June. Because it didn’t begin lobbying lawmakers until midsummer, it won’t be required to disclose how much it spent until the next filing deadline, on Oct. 31. Galen declined to say how much was spent.

Galen called complaints about the group’s name and tactics “hyperbole,” saying Californians for Recycling and the Environment made it clear its members include industry representatives.

“I think he gives us far too much credit for being ‘Orwellian,’” Galen said of Allen. “Do I believe that our name is misleading? No.”

Environmentalists say the loss at the Legislature has taught them a lesson: If lawmakers won’t act, they must go to the people. They plan to ask Californians to pass a plastic-reduction law, similar to the bills, through a November 2020 ballot initiative. Recology, the Bay Area waste hauler, said it plans to spend $1 million to gather signatures in support of the effort.

“If the industry just continues to try to block this, and is successful in blocking it, we need a Plan B,” said Eric Potashner, vice president of Recology. “We’re running out of time now with the impacts of plastic waste on our environment.”

He said bill supporters had been overwhelmed by the lobbying strength the plastics industry mustered. Meetings with lawmakers at the Capitol would be attended by as many as 25 lobbyists representing plastics interests, Potashner said. Supporters usually had about 10 people there.

Recology, like many waste haulers, sends thousands of tons of plastic waste to landfills every year. The recycling industry has been upended recently, as overseas markets, including China and the Philippines, have begun rejecting U.S. plastics.

But a voter initiative could be a difficult fight for Recology and environmental groups backing the effort. They must collect 623,212 valid signatures by the end of April to qualify a measure for the ballot.

Allen said he’s hopeful lawmakers will pass his plastics legislation when they reconvene in January. SB54 and AB1080 can be revived then.

He said the measures were scaled back significantly in an attempt to mollify business groups that warned they could be job killers. For example, a requirement that manufacturers make all single-use plastics recyclable or compostable was watered down to apply only to foodware.

“The good news is that both houses of the Legislature have already voted to approve this idea in concept,” Allen said. “Everyone is always nervous about new oversight and regulation.”

Rozenski said Novolex stands by arguments that the bills could have limited consumer access to some items, such as baby food, dog food and toothpaste, because it is difficult to recycle packaging that is lined with mixed materials like plastic and aluminum.

Supporters of the bill said the industry’s assertions that those products cannot be packaged with easily recyclable materials is an exaggeration.

Environmental groups said the evidence that plastic pollution is damaging marine habitats is indisputable — from plastic particles found at the depths of Monterey Bay to whales washing up on beaches with their stomachs full of shopping bags.

“It’s clear that our environment can’t handle it at the rate it’s going,” said Ashley Blacow-Draeger, Pacific policy manager for Oceana, an environmental group that supported the bills.“We don’t have time on our side.”

Dustin Gardiner is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dustin.gardiner@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dustingardiner