Rogers, Paul. “California Considering Toughest Plastic Pollution Laws in United States.” The Mercury News, 11 Sept. 2020, www.mercurynews.com/2019/09/11/california-considering-toughest-plastic-pollution-laws-in-united-states.

Three new bills recently were proposed in September that would force companies selling in fast food markets and supermarkets to face a larger cost for carbon emissions and plastic production. Environmental groups locally and nationally have emitted praise for these proposals, hoping to excite the public and get them passed. Many want them to be passed to set a good example for other states to follow and hopefully create a snowball effect. However, industry groups are fairly opposed to the idea, and they are persuasive of the fact that the proposals are much too unfair and too quickly ambitious, likely to have a bad effect on the economy. Activists point to the fact the rapid increase of plastic, and its exponential growth that must be stopped, as half of the plastic on Earth was produced in the last 13 years. While many Californians want to help and do their best to recycle and reuse, the problem lies with the manufacturers, where market conditions exist such that many recycled materials end up being sent internationally and end up in landfills.

I felt excited reading about the new 3 proposals with so much good potential, yet also disappointed of the backlash they received. I think it is clear that plastic pollution threatens all animal species, habitats, and humans themselves. I wish that the economy and politics were not so complicated and make it nearly impossible to get proposals like these to get passed. The more I read in this article, the more I was aware of how fast plastic use has increased, as it was only first invented just over 100 years ago, in 1907, yet now has expanded so globally. I hope that these proposals are reconsidered in the future, and that Californian voters come together in an effort to get more done in the plastic industry that has caused so many issues.