HB1553 – Requires battery producers to participate in and fund a stewardship program providing for responsible environmental management of used batteries. (Dead.)
Prime Sponsor – Representative Street (D; 37th District; Seattle) (Co-Sponsors Slatter, Fitzgibbon, Ortiz-Self, Berry, Walen, Thai, Taylor, Ramel, Ormsby, Pollet, Doglio, and Macri – Ds)
Current status – Referred to the House Committee on Environment and Energy. Still in committee by cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB5144 is a companion bill in the House.

Comments –
A similar bill, HB2496, was introduced in the 2020 session and had a hearing in the House, but did not advance beyond that. A slightly revised version, HB1896, was introduced in 2022, eventually amended to create a study of the program rather than implementing it, and died in Rules. There are roughly 25 pages of details in the bill, and I haven’t tried to get all of them into the summary. (I’ve noted some of the changes from the 2022 bill in passing.)

Summary –
The bill would make producers responsible for creating and funding a product stewardship system for dealing with all used batteries under twenty-five pounds (with a few exceptions, including batteries in devices covered by the State’s electronics recycling program, ones that aren’t intended to be removed from products, and lead acid vehicle batteries). The bill would have people drop them off at “free, continuous, convenient, visible, and accessible” collection sites, and prohibit putting them in containers for landfills, incinerators, or waste-to-energy plants. (It would now allow them in mixed recycling.) The system would include education and outreach to encourage participation, but would now make retailers’ use of the materials producer organizations would have to make available voluntary. Batteries from producers who weren’t participating couldn’t be legally sold in the state.

Producers could set up one or more battery stewardship management organizations. An organization would have to have a plan approved by the Department of Ecology. Plans would have to include collection goals for their first three years “based on” the past three years of battery sales in the state by  the producers participating in the plan, and a target to recycle at least 60% of the weight of collected rechargeable batteries and 70% of others. (These are ten percent reductions from the previous bill.) Plans have to include a system to collect charges from participating producers to cover the costs of the system, and structure the charges to encourage designs that reduce the environmental impacts of products. (They’d no longer be required to adjust the financial obligations of producers in proportion to their use of recycled content in batteries.) They’d have to indicate how facilities for dealing with the batteries would be managed with health and environmental justice standards broadly equivalent to those in the US.

There’d have to be collection sites for batteries under 11 pounds within fifteen miles for at least 95% of residents and at least one additional site in areas with over 30,000 people, as well as locations in all counties and tribal lands, and in special locations like parks and on islands. Collection sites have to operate on a free, continuous, convenient, visible, and accessible basis for any person, business, government agency, or nonprofit organization. Programs have to use the collection sites of any retailer, wholesaler, municipality, solid waste management facility, or other entity that meet the requirements for sites and request it, but retailers don’t have to provide collection. Programs have to reimburse local governments for the costs of any facilities of theirs used as battery collection sites for the program.

Plans have to include safety training procedures for collection sites about reducing risks of spills or fires, and protocols for responding to those, for managing damaged batteries, and for collecting them at specified sites or events in each county . There have to be at least twenty-five collection sites in the state for rechargeable batteries between eleven and twenty-five pounds and other batteries between 4.4 and twenty-five pounds, with reasonable geographic dispersion, including one in each county with more than 200,000 people. (They have to be certified to handle and ship hazardous materials. )

Plans have to manage batteries by prioritizing prevention and waste reduction first, then reuse when that’s appropriate, and then recycling. They can only deal with batteries in other ways, like landfilling them, after demonstrating to Ecology that these other higher priority options aren’t technologically feasible or economically practical.

Plans have to include various education and outreach activities for consumers, retailers, and the operators of collection sites, and management organizations have to survey the public about their awareness of the requirements at the beginning of the program in 2027, and every five years after that, sharing the results with Ecology. They have to submit an annual report to Ecology, including an independent financial audit, data about battery collections and recovered materials, and a variety of other information about the program, including steps for reducing the amount they haven’t recycled if that’s relevant.

After issuing a warning, Ecology can impose fines of up to $1,000 a day for violations of the law and of up to $10,000 a day for intentional, knowing, or negligent violations. In addition, management organizations can sue producers that fail to join a stewardship organization or other battery stewardship organizations that fail to meet their obligations under the act to recover the costs of dealing with those additional batteries.

Details –
The bill requires batteries to have labels disclosing their chemistry and producer; products containing batteries would have to certify they were labeled.

Plans have to be reviewed and approved by the Department of Ecology, which is to collect a fee from producers to cover the cost of administering the program. It’s to maintain a public list of producers and brands that can be legally sold because they’re in the program.

The bill allows manufacturers to request that submitted information be exempted from public records requests, and has the Director of the Department do that if it isn’t detrimental to the public interest and is consistent with the public records law. It authorizes the Pollution Control Hearings Board to deal with appeals.