Dive Brief:

• California Governor Edmund Brown Jr. signed SB 270- the U.S.’s first statewide bag ban into law last month, but that isn’t stopping the American Progressive Bag Alliance (APBA) from opposing the legislation.
• The APBA, a group with ties to the plastic bag industry, is working to have the law overturned. 
• The group plans an attempt to stop the law via the referendum process in order to repeal SB 270 on the ball in November of 2016. It calls the bag ban an "unprecedented scam.”

Dive Insight:

APBA alleges that the bag ban is a “back room deal between the grocers and union bosses to scam California consumers out of billions of dollars without providing any public benefit- all under the guise of environmentalism.”  The group says a referendum will take the vote directly to the voters so the public can decide itself. 

It took years for the bag ban bill to pass. The bill went through multiple attempts and repeatedly stalled in the state Assembly, prompting more than 100 cities and counties in California to implement their own plastic bag ordinances. When the statewide law begins in July 2015, the new law would allow existing local ordinances to remain.