Two environmental groups are charging in a new report that California's waste plastics exports violate state laws against shipping overly contaminated bales of recycled plastic and are asking the state's attorney general to investigate.
The Basel Action Network and the Last Beach Cleanup said they analyzed data published in December by the state agency CalRecycle and found that bales of recycled plastic shipped to Mexico, Vietnam, Malaysia and other countries violates both state law and 2019 changes to the Basel Convention limiting trade in waste plastic.
"What we're finding here is gross illegality, particularly in the exports to Mexico that are happening right now," said Jim Puckett, BAN executive director, speaking at a Feb. 13 hearing before CalRecycle. "It has to be addressed, immediately."
The two nongovernmental organizations are asking California Attorney General Rob Bonta to investigate violations of what's called Senate Bill 343, a 2021 law limiting recyclability labeling, and Assembly Bill 881, another 2021 statute that says only plastic waste exports that are actually recycled are counted toward California's recycling rate.
Bonta's office has been active on plastics issues. In 2022, it publicly launched an investigation into plastics industry recycling claims and a few months later asked plastic bag makers to demonstrate their recyclability claims.
The environmental groups said in their Feb. 12 report that exported bales of recycled plastic had contamination levels between 6-17 percent, well above the 2-5 percent range that are international norms under the terms of the Basel Convention, a 1989 international agreement on waste.
They also said the contaminated bales of PET, polyethylene and polypropylene exports can't count as being recycled under state laws measuring California's recycling rate, since they do not meet Basel requirements.
As well, the two groups said the state should stop exports of recycled PET thermoforms in bales with PET bottles, and separate them in bales for domestic recycling.
Other speakers at the Feb. 13 CalRecycle hearing, which dealt with a wide variety of SB 343 questions, pressed the agency on enforcement and exports.
Nick Lapis, director of advocacy at Californians Against Waste, said SB 343 requires that plastics sorted at a materials recovery facility "be a defined stream that goes to a market consistent with the Basel Convention."
"That is one of the things you were supposed to evaluate," he said. "It sounds like that was not included."
CalRecycle spokesman Lance Klug said in a written statement that the state is reviewing the BAN and Last Beach Cleanup study as part of its work on SB 343.
The agency plans a more formal public hearing on SB 343 in coming months and will release an updated reported on the new law 60 days after that.
At the hearing, a CalRecycle official suggested the export question was beyond the scope of the agency's work on SB 343, which deals most directly with recyclability labeling on packaging.
"SB 343 and CalRecycle is not concerned with whether any particular movement of materials exports are illegal under any other law," said Daniel Zlatnick, a CalRecycle attorney. "It's only concerned with the legality of actual labeling. Whether or not things are being exported illegally, I understand that word has been used, but that's just not part of SB 343."
But Jan Dell, the founder of the Last Beach Cleanup, said stopping exports of contaminated waste is part of SB 343 and AB 881's goals.
"CalRecycle's mission to achieve high waste diversion rates has pushed harmful plastic waste exports to developing countries for years under the pretense of recycling," she said. "With the passage of SB 343 and AB 881 this was supposed to stop. It's unacceptable for the agency to now make a mockery of these laws by refusing to enforce them."