Inside the fight over recycling milk cartons

State goes back and forth over whether they can sport chasing arrows label — key for future sales

- Susanne Rust

SINGLE-USE packaging products must be recyclable or compostable by 2032, according to state law.

A battle has been waging in Sacramento over whether beverage cartons — the ones used for milk, juice, broth, wine, even egg whites — should get the coveted chasing arrows recycling label.

This year, the state agency in charge of recycling, CalRecycle, determined the cartons were probably not eligible, because they weren't being sorted and recycled by the vast majority of the state’s waste haulers, a requirement of the state’s “Truth in Recycling” law, Senate Bill 54.

Three months later, the agency reversed course.

The label is critical for product and packaging companies to keep selling in California as the state’s single-use packaging law goes fully into effect. It calls for all single-use packaging products to be recyclable or compostable by 2032. If they’re not, they can’t be sold or distributed in the state.

According to internal agency emails, documents and industry news releases, the change was prompted by data from the carton packaging industry's trade group, the Carton Council of North America. The council had also announced it was investing in a carton recycling facility in Lodi.

The waste agency’s reversal incensed several waste experts, antiplastic activists and environmentalists, who say cartons have limited, if any, value or recycling potential. They say the new industrybacked facility in Lodi is nothing more than a facade — one of several similar operations that have failed across the country. CalRecycle’s revised determination about the recyclability of the material, they say, is based on flawed methods that are easy to exploit.

Some say it’s just the latest example of Gov. Gavin Newsom and CalRecycle retreating from the state’s landmark single-use plastic law and other ambitious antiwaste and antiplastic laws that he and the waste agency once touted.