The Napa County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday passed a ban on retailers providing plastic carryout bags to customers in the county's unincorporated areas starting next year, closing a loophole that had allowed thicker plastic bags marketed as reusable. The new rule aligns county policy with a forthcoming state law. Retailers will have until the ban takes effect to use up their remaining plastic checkout bags.
State Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, said companies Novolex Holdings, Inteplast Group and Mettler Packaging violated a state law passed in 2014 that banned plastic bags at grocery store checkouts that weren't recyclable. Under the law, shoppers could pay 10 cents for thicker plastic bags that needed to be reusable and recyclable. But the makers of the bags labeled them as recyclable even though they were not - recycling facilities cannot process them and they end up dumped in landfills, incinerated, or in the state's waterways, Bonta said.