California drafts bill to require one-piece caps for plastic bottles
On December 12, 2024, the California Senate is passing a new bill that requires plastic beverage containers under 3 liters to use one-piece caps by January 1, 2027.
1. The bill will be heard in 2025.
Disposable plastic caps are easily separated from bottles, reducing the possibility of recycling and increasing the possibility of becoming garbage.
California Senator Steve Padilla drafted the bill, SB-45. The bill will be heard in the coming months of 2025.
The practice of using one-piece caps is already common in Europe. In 2018, the European Union announced a directive to phase out separate plastic bottle caps by the summer of 2024 to reduce disposable plastics.
2. Most plastic caps cannot be recycled.
California produces more than 14 billion plastic beverage containers and plastic caps each year. Although 70% of the bottles are recycled, most of the plastic caps are not recycled. Data shows that only a small portion of the 44 million pounds of plastic bottle caps produced each year are properly recycled. In 2023, plastic bottle caps were the third most common trash on California beaches, three times the number of related plastic bottles.
In 2024 alone, surfing volunteers cleaned up nearly 30,000 plastic bottle caps along the coast of the United States. Jennifer Savage, deputy director of California policy at the Surfriders Foundation, said that turtles, seabirds, whales, dolphins, seals, sea lions and other creatures mistake plastic caps for food, and these plastic products can cause terrible injuries such as internal injuries, starvation and poisoning.
3. Common one-piece caps
Common one-piece caps include screw-on one-piece caps and snap-on one-piece caps. The screw-on one-piece cap is a more mainstream design currently launched, and many large packaging brands have adopted this design commercially.
Coca-Cola was the first to launch this new type of bottle cap in the European market in November 2022, and brands such as Lipton, Oasis, and Parker have followed suit.
