I first saw aseptic containers when I was in Europe in the early 1980s and thought they were wonderful. They meant soups, juices, eggs, and other products that would last as long as canned goods but that wouldn’t taste of the can, even while making food easier to store and ship. Now, they are ubiquitous, holding everything from kids’ juice to everyone’s favorite Kirkland chicken stock, a stable in innumerable kitchens. In just three years, though, thanks to Greenie fervor, they may well be banned from California stores…which is sure to have a ripple effect across America.

The Pacific Research Institute, an excellent conservative organization that’s managed to thrive inside San Francisco itself, has an essay discussing how the state’s new recycling and compostable rules will affect aseptic containers.

Image: Public domain.

We’re all familiar with the bans already in place in California: paper bags, single-use plastic bags, straws, plastic utensils…they’ve all been put on the chopping block. The latest targets are containers that cannot be recycled or composted:

Lawmakers added to the growing pile of recycling legislation when in 2022 they passed Senate Bill 54, the ​​Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act. Just after Christmas, CalRecycle issued a report of proposed regulations for the implementation of SB 54. The report contains “key building blocks for California’s groundbreaking law to cut single-use plastic and packaging waste.”

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For instance, SB 54 requires single-use packaging and plastic food ware users to “create an industry-led producer responsibility organization (PRO),” which will be “overseen by CalRecycle,” says Plastics Today.

Companies that produce “covered materials” will have to “source reduced plastic covered material by 25 percent, meet a 65 percent recycling rate goal and ensure that all covered material offered for sale, distributed in, or imported into the state on or after January 1, 2032, is recyclable or compostable.”

After Jan. 1, 2027, “producers may not sell, offer for sale, import or distribute covered materials in the state,” says Melanie Turner, a CalRecycle spokesperson, “unless the producer is a member of a PRO or is complying individually with the statute.”

According to CalRecycle, aseptic containers will soon be verboten. The ramifications are serious. From the same article:

So what happens to aseptic packaging after Jan. 1, 2032 (or Jan. 1, 2027), the deadline for covered materials to be recyclable or compostable? Is California enacting a de facto ban on these containers? If so, what happens to the companies that make them? Do they scale back operations, which means workers will be fired? Or do they eventually go out of business altogether, since, as the June 2022 Senate floor analysis says, other states wish to follow Sacramento’s lead on this issue?

Considering California’s economic heft, the ramifications may spin out to other states. It may not be worth it for manufacturers to create special packaging for the California market. Eventually, they may decide that it’s easier just to go back to a pre-aseptic packaging world, one in which food didn’t last as long, forcing consumers to buy products more frequently. After all, we saw textbook makers over the decades bow down to the demands of California’s schools, so why shouldn’t it happen for other items?

Whether California laws affect others across America will also play out this year now that its anti-animal cruelty law is going into effect. Moving forward, all animal goods sold in California must have been raised in an environment optimal for the animals’ mental health and well-being. Yes, factory farming can be relatively cruel, but it brings food prices down. Now, if farmers want to have a piece of the California market, they’re going to have to engage in much more expensive practices. I expect that to affect California’s food supply and food prices, and wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t a ripple effect as farmers across America either lose the California market or change their habits.

As California goes, so goes the nation. This isn’t because California’s policies are so wonderful. It’s because its economic heft means that its policies inevitably spread, for better or worse.