Four bills relating to plastic reduction and recycling market response are still moving through the Legislature. Here’s the current status of each:

Plastic bans

SB 5077 was introduced as a bill to ban plastic straws. After passing the Senate, it became a “straws on request only” bill; but grandfathered in any city bans already in place. Now, after passing out of its House committee, the bill retains the request-only provision, but prohibits a city from banning plastic straws. The bill continues to grandfather in any city ban in place as of January 1, 2020. The amended bill also allows food service establishments to provide customers with a “tippy” cup lid instead of a requested straw.

SB 5077 is awaiting a floor vote in the House.

AWC opposes the preemption in this bill, restricting a city from making a local decision to reduce plastic consumption and pollution within its jurisdiction.

SB 5323 is the plastic bag ban bill. It has not been amended since it passed the Senate. To see details on what this bill does, please see our previous article.

SB 5323 was voted out of House Finance Committee and referred to House Appropriations for a hearing and action on Monday, April 8 at 9 am.

Plastic stewardship

SB 5397 was introduced to create a plastic product stewardship program for Washington. After passing the Senate, the bill proposes to study the plastic impacts in the state and evaluate the role of a stewardship program. To read all the details of the version that passed the Senate, please see our previous article.

The House committee passed the bill with the following changes:

• The scope of the assessment due to the Legislature in 2020 must:
  • Include plastic packaging produced in Washington, in addition to plastic packaging imported into Washington; and
  • Include a review and identification of businesses that use recycled plastic material as a feedstock or component of a company product.
• The recommendations in the report must:
  • Be consistent with the federal food, drug, and cosmetic act;
  • Identify expected costs and benefits to government agencies and to private persons or businesses to meet plastic packaging reduction goals; and
  • Include reducing plastic packaging through industry initiative or plastic packaging product stewardship, or both.
• Eliminates the goal of achieving one hundred percent recyclable, reusable, or compostable packaging in all goods sold in Washington by 2025; instead, establishes a goal of achieving sustainable and realistic policies for plastic packaging by 2025.
• The bill is void if not funded in the operating budget.

AWC supports SB 5397 as a path forward to create long-term sustainable markets for plastics. The bill is in its House fiscal committee and must be voted out by April 9 to stay alive.

Recycling market research center

HB 1543 is Ecology’s request bill to create an in-house, recycling market research center. This bill was also amended in its Senate committee, which made this proposal even more costly and ineffective. To see details and our concerns with this bill, see our previous article.

The Senate amendment added a requirement that the recycling development center include a life-cycle analysis (LCA) in the market development for recyclable materials. LCAs are complex, imprecise, and costly. Data used to create an LCA is only available nationally, creating unreliable results for Washington. Further, an LCA provides a point-in-time view of a selected impact. Most importantly, LCAs are lacking for this use in that they only consider the current life-cycle – rather than the next life-cycle, which is critical in creating a circular materials management economy (i.e. closed loop production).

HB 1543 is awaiting a public hearing in Senate Ways & Means Committee.