Republished by Newlife - Flexstone. All rights belong to the original publisher; see Source below.

California’s Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) has updated its source reduction baseline as the state’s extended producer responsibility (EPR) law for packaging, Senate Bill 54, inches closer to its launch date.

The law is scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, 2027. One of its key mandates is that producers selling packaging and food service ware into the state must collectively achieve 25 percent reductions of the weight of plastic and plastic components used in their products by 2032. Source reduction targets are based on a 2023 baseline.

CalRecycle’s source reduction baseline update is informed by data reported by producers to the state’s chosen producer responsibility organization, the Circular Action Alliance (CAA). The department says it received data from 2,127 producers of plastic covered material, accounting for about 50 percent of total participant producers. The new 2023 baseline is 1.03 million tons of plastic covered material and 222 billion plastic components.

Those numbers stand in contrast to CalRecycle’s initial 2023 baseline report, published in December 2024, that claimed more than 2.9 million tons of plastic were used in single-use packaging and plastic food service ware and collectively were made up of 171.4 billion plastic components.

The 2024 report estimated the source reduction baseline by utilizing publicly available and third-party data on plastic generation (manufacturing, trade, distribution and sales) to estimate the approximate amount of single-use packaging and service ware sold, offered for sale or distributed in the state in 2023.

That model separately calculated the amount of single-use plastic packaging and single-use plastic food-ware. For packaging, the weight of plastic and number of plastic components was estimated based on the number of products sold in California, while food-ware estimates were based on the number of meals eaten out or at home using disposable plastics.

Producers will be tasked with meeting source reduction goals ahead of the 2032 deadline. The are required to meet a 10 percent threshold by Jan. 1, 2027, and 20 percent by Jan. 1, 2030. In meeting the targets, CAA is required to utilize transitions or refillable alternatives to single-use plastic covered material by at least 2 percent by Jan. 1, 2027; 4 percent by Jan. 1, 2030; and 10 percent by Jan. 1, 2032.

According to CalRecycle CAA’s S.B. 54 program plan.

Source

- Recycling Today (2026-11-06) - Original article: CalRecycle updates SB 54 source reduction baseline - https://www.recyclingtoday.com/calrecycle-updates-sb-54-source-reduction-baseline-epr