HB1164 – Creates a producer responsibility program for appliance refrigerants and insulating foam.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Doglio (D; 22nd District; Olympia) (Co-Sponsor Fitzgibbon )
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment & Energy February 16th. Still there at cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
The bill would make the parties categorized as producers responsible for creating and funding a stewardship system for dealing with the refrigerants and insulating foam in a wide range of used residential, commercial, and institutional appliances. (It excludes appliances over 1,000 pounds, those that are integral parts of structures, like ice rink refrigeration systems and commercial or multifamily central air conditioning systems, and the air conditioners in vehicles and other mobile applications.) Producers would have to participate in a stewardship organization with a plan to sell covered appliances in the state. The Department of Ecology would implement the program, approve plans, set fees to recover its administrative costs from producers, and enforce the bill’s requirements.

Plans would need to be submitted by 2027 and include methods for achieving the bill’s performance goals; education and outreach plans for retailers and consumers; mechanisms for collecting covered appliances and paying the plan’s financial incentives for turning them in; describe how the program will use consistent best environmental practices in managing pieces of collected appliances; identify brokers, transporters, processors, and facilities to be used by the program; and describe the methods for financing it, including modulating producers’ fees to encourage recycling, resource conservation, the use of low emission refrigerants, and other environmental goals. (The bill exempts an organization’s receipts from its charges for producer members from the B&O tax.) After five years Ecology could require programs that were not meeting performance goals to submit revised plans.

The bill’s performance requirements begin at different levels in 2027 and 2028, between 30% and 75% of the in-state sales for different categories of appliances in baseline years set by Ecology. They increase by 5% a year until they reach 70% to 90%, depending on the category.

Stewardship organizations would have to provide for the free collection of covered appliances directly or at sites, including at least one permanent site in each county. They’d need to provide payments to consumers (in addition to any energy efficiency or utility incentives) that Ecology agreed were sufficient to incentivize the use of the program and to discourage illegal dumping or venting of refrigerants or other pollutants. They’d be required to reimburse local governments for the costs of using a local facility or solid waste handling site as a collection location. Retailers would have to make information provided by organizations about the program available to customers, and could choose to provide collection sites.

There are various reporting requirements, and a provision for maintaining the confidentiality of submitted information. Ecology could take a variety of steps to deal with organizations that were not meeting their obligations, including impose fines of up to $1,000 per violation per day, after a warning, and up to $10,000 per violation per day for the second and each subsequent violation. Appeals would be handled by the Pollution Control Hearings Board.