Recycling: plastic material.

Existing law requires the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery to administer state programs to recycle solid waste, plastic trash bags, plastic packaging containers, waste tires, newsprint, and other specified materials. The existing California Integrated Waste Management Act of 1989 requires each city, county, city and county, and regional agency, if any, to develop a source reduction and recycling element of an integrated waste management plan containing specified components. The element is required to divert 50% of the solid waste subject to the element, except as specified, through source reduction, recycling, and composting activities. The act also declares that it is the policy goal of the state that not less than 75% of solid waste generated be source reduced, recycled, or composted by the year 2020, and annually thereafter. This bill would restate the policy goal of the state to provide that the goal is for not less than 75% of solid waste generated to be source reduced, recycled, used for power generation in dedicated anaerobic digesters as well as in modern landfills capturing methane gas, or composted by the year 2020, and annually thereafter. The bill would also require the department to investigate emerging technologies that convert used plastic, textile, and fiber products into new plastic feedstock and monomers, adopt regulations and protocols by January 1, 2017, that encourage waste-to-energy and waste-to-fuel pyrolysis projects that address the various types and grades of plastic, textile, and fiber products that are disposed of in landfills, and, beginning January 1, 2017, and each year thereafter, examine and report to the Legislature on possible incentives for locating in-state those businesses and organizations that practice state-of-the-art, cost-effective material separation and recovery techniques as well as those organizations that are now commercially developing the most cost-effective conversion of mixed plastic, textile, and fiber wastes to fuels.