Environmental issues peaked early in session

For cities, it was a relatively quiet session on the environmental beat. Major proposals to re-envision the recycling system to bring consumer products’ brand owners (think Nestle, owner of 2,000 branded products) into the system to help fund collection of their packaging resurfaced again this year. The proposal made it to the House floor calendar, but the chamber declined to bring it up for a vote (HB 1131/SB 5154). Furious lobbying from the solid waste firms who were concerned about the implications of this new system on their bottom line was ultimately too much for the bill to overcome. We expect the conversation to continue this interim and next session.

Following passage of the Climate Commitment Act in 2021, the state continues to advance additional climate policies. This session, Legislature passed laws that will develop a cohort of climate policy personnel that can help the state continue to lead on climate mitigation and resiliency (HB 1176) and update the state’s climate resiliency efforts (HB 1728).

Other than the recycling proposals, the rest of the environmental issues were mostly non-controversial for cities. Luckily for your AWC team, there were plenty of housing bills to take up the slack.