Within days of California’s long-anticipated single-use plastic law going into effect, environmentalists, anti-waste activists and the packaging industry reacted with anger and frustration.

Anti-plastic activists say Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration and CalRecycle inserted exemptions favoring the plastic industry into the law’s regulations that weaken it and undermine legislative intent.

“These new rules create huge loopholes for plastic packaging that violate the law,” said Avinash Kar, senior director of the toxics program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

On the other side, the packaging industry has sued over similar laws in other states. “Our members have real concerns about cost, compliance, and constitutionality,” said Matt Clarke, spokesman for the National Assn. of Wholesaler-Distributors, which sued Oregon earlier this year over a similar waste law.

CalRecycle, the state’s waste agency, did not respond in time for publication. The final regulations putting the law into effect were released May 1 and posted for review Tuesday.

The environmental organizations say the law’s new final regulations open the door to what is known as “chemical recycling,” which produces large amounts of hazardous waste. The law also contains problematic exemptions for certain categories of plastic foodware, they say.

The language of the law forbids any kind of recycling that would produce significant amounts of hazardous waste. The new regulations allow for these recycling methods if the facilities are properly permitted.

The new regulations also exempt certain products if they are already covered by federal law. For instance, a packaging company, retailer or distributor can claim that they have such a preemption, Kar said, and CalRecycle might not immediately review that claim. “And as long as they don’t review it, they’ll get the exemption for as long as CalRecycle doesn’t review it,” creating a potential “forever loophole.”

“Californians were promised a system where producers take real responsibility for the waste they create,” said Nick Lapis, advocacy director for Californians Against Waste. “When regulations introduce broad exemptions and redefine key terms, that promise starts to erode. The details matter here, and right now they don’t line up with the intent of the law.”

Senate Bill 54, the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act, was signed by Newsom in 2022. It was considered landmark legislation because it addressed the scourge of single-use plastics, requiring plastic and packaging companies to use less of them and ensuring that by 2032, all food packaging is either recyclable or compostable.

Accumulating plastic waste is overwhelming waterways and oceans, sickening marine life and threatening human health.

The law’s intent was not only to reduce it, but also to put the onus and cost of dealing with it on packaging producers and manufacturers, not consumers and local governments. It was supposed to incentivize companies to consider the fate of their products and spur innovation in material redesign.

According to one state analysis, 2.9 million tons of single-use plastic and 171.4 billion single-use plastic components were sold, offered for sale, or distributed during 2023 in California.

Similar laws have been passed in Maine, Oregon, Colorado, Minnesota, Maryland and Washington. Oregon’s law, however, is on hold while a lawsuit by the National Assn. of Wholesaler-Distributors works its way through the courts.

“We see a lot of the same problems in California that we flagged in Oregon,” said Clarke, the trade group spokesman. “Given California’s scale, the cost implications are going to be even larger. Our legal counsel has noted that California’s proposed fees are already higher than what other states have put forward.”

Jan Dell of Last Beach Cleanup, an anti-plastic waste group based in Laguna Beach, doesn’t believe the law will work — irrespective of the final regulations — and said the “exorbitant” cost of its implementation will either spur producers to sue, or they’ll end up passing the higher costs on to consumers.

She referred to a report from the Circular Action Alliance, the state-sanctioned group established to represent and oversee the implementation of the law on behalf of the plastic and packaging industry. It finds the law will increase the cost of disposal between six and 14 times for common products, such as Windex bottles, made of polyethylene terephthalate.

“If the producers don’t successfully sue to stop the fees, this will certainly add to product inflation for CA consumers,” she said in an email. “Californians already have to pay exorbitantly high curbside collection fees for trash, recycling, and organics … so, starting in 2027, our groceries will cost a LOT more but we won’t see a reduction in our waste bills.”

Christopher “Smitty” Smith, a partner at law firm Saul Ewing in Los Angeles, who councils companies and interest groups on SB 54 and other Extended Producer Liability laws, said that although he could see areas of the law that “could be sharper and avoid the legal challenges … you can’t stop people from suing.” Environmentalists and anti-waste activists say they are preparing a lawsuit.

Smith said the law already has sparked changes in how companies think and respond to concerns about waste.

One of his national fast-food chain clients has realized that if its brand name is on plastic packaging, it’s that company’s responsibility, he said, so “they’ve spent the past year mapping out their franchise agreements, their supply chain agreements, their producer agreements, to figure out” what it needs to do to comply.

He said in the past, companies have paid little attention to these details and just let their franchisees figure this kind of thing out. Now, they’re spending a lot of time and money “to wrap their arms around what their supply chain looks like and like, what post consumer use of their plastic products looks like and what their regulatory obligations are.”

It’s bringing a new dialogue within companies. And that, Smith said, is what could make this law so powerful.

Times staff writer Meg Tanaka contributed to this report.

California Democrats in Congress are raising concerns about Paramount Skydance’s proposed takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery — a $111-billion deal that would dramatically reshape Hollywood by consolidating two historic film studios.

Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) and 33 other members of Congress on Thursday urged California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to scrutinize potential antitrust harms that would come from billionaire David Ellison’s proposed takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery — and possibly bring a legal challenge. The lawmakers’ campaign comes after more than 4,000 entertainment industry workers, including Jane Fonda, Ben Stiller and J.J. Abrams, signed an open letter calling for the deal to be blocked.

“We remain concerned that the proposed merger could harm California workers and consumers,” the 34 lawmakers wrote in their letter to Bonta. “We therefore respectfully urge you to closely analyze the potential effects of this merger, and, if you determine that this merger would have anticompetitive effects, use your best judgment to pursue the appropriate course of action.”

The deal, the largest Hollywood merger in nearly a decade, would bring together Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures, streaming services HBO Max, Discovery+ and Paramount+, more than two dozen cable channels as well as CBS News and CNN. Paramount has said it expects the combination would bring at least $6 billion in cost savings, raising fears among the Democrats about widespread job losses.

Pressure is growing on Bonta to try to thwart Ellison’s proposed merger.

Bonta has previously told The Times his office is reviewing the proposed combination to determine whether it would harm consumers and industry competition. On Thursday, a spokesperson confirmed there was still “an active investigation,” into the proposed merger, but Bonta’s office had no “updates to share at this time.”

Bonta separately has brought a lawsuit with a bipartisan group of 13 state attorneys general to halt another merger — a massive consolidation of television stations by Nexstar Media Group — favored by President Trump.

The president wants to give more power to Nexstar, which owns network affiliate TV stations, to weaken ABC and NBC. In that case, a federal judge in Sacramento has issued a temporary injunction to freeze the merger until a trial to determine whether that deal violates century-old antitrust laws. Irving, Texas-based Nexstar is appealing the ruling.

Critics of the Warner Bros. deal are nudging Bonta to separately bring a lawsuit to block Paramount’s proposed takeover of its rival.

“Writers have seen merger after merger leave fewer and fewer companies in control of what our members can get paid to write,” Writers Guild of America West President Michele Mulroney said to make a case against the merger during a press briefing last month.

Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders have voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Paramount transaction that would pay them $31 a share.

Several U.S. senators, including Cory Booker (D-N.J.), also have sounded alarms, including about plans to bring sovereign wealth funds representing the royal families of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi into the deal as minority investors. Those Middle Eastern investors would hold a nearly 50% equity stake of the new company, although Paramount has said the wealth funds would not have board seats.

The Paramount-Warner Bros. transaction is expected to fly through its antitrust review at the U.S. Justice Department, in part, because billionaire Larry Ellison, who has agreed to backstop the financing for the deal, maintains close ties with Trump. Paramount has said it expects the deal to be completed before the end of September.

Trump has agitated for changes at CNN, one of Warner’s most prominent properties. Ellison’s son David, who is chairman and chief executive of Paramount, hosted a party in Washington two weeks ago to honor Trump and other high-level cabinet officials, including some who have expressed a desire to see Ellison in charge of CNN.

“The proposed merger does not occur in a vacuum,” the lawmakers wrote. “Decades of consolidation in this industry have already resulted in reduced output, higher prices, fewer choices, and less innovation, while merged studios face few consequences for breaking their pre-merger promises.”

Paramount representatives, who did not immediately comment Thursday, have previously defended the proposed takeover.

David Ellison has also promised to maintain the two studios’ current release schedules of 15 movies a year — for a total of 30 films a year — following the merger.

“This is also a moment when the industry has been facing significant disruption — and the need for strong, creative-first and well-capitalized companies that can continue to invest in storytelling has never been greater,” Paramount has said, adding that it will follow through on its commitments to ensure that “creators have more avenues for their work, not fewer.”

The Congress members’ letter also called into question the Trump administration’s oversight, alleging there has been “unprecedented politicization of antitrust enforcement.”

“Given that we cannot have confidence that the Trump administration review of the merger will be conducted according to the law, and with the best interests of American workers and consumers in mind, it is even more vital that you conduct a thorough, independent review,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter to Bonta.

Federal regulators agreed to approve the Ellison family’s acquisition of Paramount last summer after Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit he brought over edits to a CBS “60 Minutes” interview with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris prior to the 2024 election.

The proposed merger would saddle the combined company with $79 billion in debt, stoking fears that Paramount would be forced to make steep cost cuts to balance such a large debt load. In the last three months, Paramount lined up banks and other institutional investors to provide bridge financing to help pull off the transaction, the company said.

The letter from Friedman and the others noted that the film industry in Los Angeles already is almost on the ropes. Last summer, on-location production in the Los Angeles area declined by 13%. More than 42,000 film industry jobs were lost between 2022 and 2024, a period that included two labor strikes.

David Ellison, the chairman and chief executive of Paramount Skydance, attended President Trump’s State of the Union address in February as a guest of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina).

(Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)

Friedman was joined by a group of prominent Democrats that includes Reps. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), Julia Brownley (D-Westlake Village) , Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana), Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and George Whitesides (D-Santa Clarita).