By Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix
Due in part to an outpouring of opposition, a proposal that would have banned local governments from imposing regulations against single-use items like plastic bags, bottles, cups and cardboard died during the 2024 legislative session.
But it’s a new year and a new legislative session, and nearly the exact same proposal won approval in the Florida House Natural Resources & Disasters Subcommittee on Tuesday in its first committee stop of the 2025 legislative session on a party-line vote.
The measure, sponsored by Miami-Dade Republican Omar Blanco (HB 565), is the latest move from Tallahassee to preempt cities and counties from enforcing local environmental laws.
“HB 565 ensures regulatory clarity, statewide uniformity, and consumer convenience,” Blanco told the committee.
His measure would ban regulating any “auxiliary container” made of cloth, paper, or plastic, including (but not limited to) foamed plastic; expanded plastic or polystyrene cardboard, corrugated materials, molded fiber, aluminum, glass, postconsumer recycled matter or similar material or substrates, including coated, laminated or multilayer substrates.
Since 2008, state law has barred local governments from reducing or eliminating many of the sources of plastic that clog sandy beaches, harm waterways and impair the state’s tourism economy. At least 16 states similarly forbid the banning of plastic bags, according to the Retail Industry Leaders Association.
“Local governments are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of plastic that we produce and generate,” said Katie Bauman, Florida policy director for the Surfrider Foundation.
“We’re running out of space. This is due large part to differing governing bodies and municipalities that have been preempted and paralyzed in taking action for the greater part of the last decade. The result of this preemption is that it compounds local governments’ difficulty in dealing with the mess that we make. We are burying trash. We are shipping it to other parts of the state. We’re thinking about shipping it to other states … and yet the root problem will not go away unless we address it. Floridians and local governments want a solution.”
Documented harm
Opponents of the proposal cite reports produced by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection in 2010 and again in 2022 regarding the need for and efficacy of both statewide and local regulation of bags used by consumers from retail establishments. The 2022 report showed that “a substantial majority of respondents support the need for regulation.”
“Nowhere did it show or suggest that further expanding or entrenching this preemption would be a positive benefit. That is what is being contemplated in this bill today,” Bauman said about that report.
The bill also removes a provision requiring the DEP to update that reporting.
Michele Drucker of the Florida PTA legislative committee discussed the harms that chemicals in plastics can cause to health.
“We have now learned that there are 100 times more microplastics in bottled products than previously understood, and it is affecting our reproductive capacity,” she said. “It’s affecting our endocrine system.”
More than 16,000 chemicals are used in plastics manufacturing, and over 1,000 industrial chemicals used today are suspected endocrine disruptors, according to a 2024 report by an international team of scientists with the PlastChem Project.
Representatives of the Florida Retail Federation, the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, and the Florida Chamber of Commerce attended the committee meeting and indicated support.
Party lines
All five Democrats on the committee opposed the measure.
“We have very, very environmentally sensitive lands and the people who live there want to protect those areas and why wouldn’t we let them?” said South Florida Rep. Kelly Skidmore. “Why would we say we know best in Tallahassee — landlocked Tallahassee. That we’re going to tell everybody else what to do?”
All 19 Republicans on the committee voted yes, but Rep. Jim Mooney, who represents the Florida Keys in the House, said he was a “soft yes” and urged Blanco to read a recent report published by Florida International University.
That report says that the tourism and food service industries have been identified as major contributors to plastic waste and that the increase in those outlets has “resulted in the proliferation of plastic litter.” It estimated the cost of plastic beach debris to Florida’s tourism economy to be about $7 billion per year.
Blanco’s bill has two more stop in the House before getting to the floor. There is Senate companion bill filed by Lee County Republican Jonathan Martin (SB 1822) that has yet to be heard in that chamber.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Banner photo: Plastic waste being picked up on a beach (iStock image).
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