Newsom's podcast sidekick: a single-use plastic water bottle

Johnny had Ed. Conan had Andy. And Gov. Gavin Newsom? A single-use integrative h2o bottle.

In astir of the YouTube video recordings of Newsom’s caller podcast, “This is Gavin Newsom,” a single-use integrative h2o vessel lurks connected a array nearby.

Sometimes, it is accompanied by a single-use java cup. Other times, it stands alone.

Typically, specified merchandise placement would rise nary an eyebrow. But successful caller weeks, environmentalists, discarded advocates, lawmakers and others person been battling with the politician and his medication implicit a landmark single-use integrative instrumentality that Newsom signed successful 2022, but which helium has since worked to defang — reducing the fig of packaged single-use products the instrumentality was designed to people and perchance opening the doorway for polluting forms of recycling.

Anti-plastic advocates accidental it’s an abrupt and disappointing pivot from the governor, who successful June 2022, decried integrative contamination and the plague of single-use integrative connected the environment.

“It’s similar that full French Laundry happening each implicit again,” said 1 anti-plastic advocate, who didn’t privation to beryllium identified for fearfulness of angering the governor. Newsom was infamously caught eating without a disguise astatine the vino state edifice during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Newsom’s efforts to standard backmost SB 54, the state’s single-use integrative recycling law, has dismayed environmentalists who person agelong considered Newsom 1 of their staunchest allies.

“Our kids merit a aboriginal escaped of integrative discarded and each its unsafe impacts ... No more,” Newsom said successful 2022, erstwhile helium signed SB 54. “California won’t tolerate integrative discarded that’s filling our waterways and making it harder to breathe. We’re holding polluters liable and cutting plastics astatine the source.”

Asked astir the beingness of the integrative h2o bottle, Daniel Villaseñor, the governor’s lawman manager of communications, had this response:

“Are you truly penning a communicative this baseless oregon should we item this video for your editor?” Villaseñor said via email, attaching a video clip showing this newsman seated adjacent a integrative h2o vessel astatine past year’s Los Angeles Times’ Climate Summit. (The bottles were placed adjacent chairs for each the panelists; this peculiar 1 was ne'er touched.)

More than a half-dozen environmentalists and discarded advocates asked to remark for this communicative declined to talk connected the record, citing concerns including imaginable retribution from the governor’s bureau and appearing to look similar scolds arsenic negotiations implicit implementing SB 54 continue.

Dianna Cohen, the co-founder and main enforcement of Plastic Pollution Coalition, said that portion she wouldn’t remark connected the politician and his integrative sidekick, she noted that integrative contamination is an “urgent planetary crisis” that requires beardown policies and regulations.

“Individuals — particularly those successful the nationalist oculus — tin assistance displacement civilization by modeling these solutions. We indispensable each enactment to clasp the values we privation to spot and co-create a healthier world,” she said successful a statement.

On Thursday, Newsom dropped a caller occurrence of “This is Gavin Newsom” with autarkic writer Aaron Parnas. In the video, determination wasn’t a integrative vessel successful sight.