HB2301 – Improving waste management systems, including products affecting composting systems.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Doglio (D; 22nd District; Olympia) (Co-Sponsors Fitzgibbon, Duerr, Berry, Ramel, Ormsby, Peterson, Pollet, Macri, Cortes, Shavers, Leavitt, and Kloba – Ds)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Energy & Environment January 23rd. Replaced by a substitute and passed out of committee January 30th. Referred to Appropriations; scheduled for a hearing there at 9:00 AM on Saturday February 3rd.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB6180 is a companion bill in the Senate.
In the House –
The folder with materials for the executive session has the substitute and there’s a staff summary of the changes at the beginning of that.
Summary –
The bill would require Ecology’s Center for Sustainable Food Management to develop and administer new grant programs in consultation with the Department of Agriculture; some of these would support activities reducing emissions by diverting organic materials from landfills and waste-to-energy facilities, or through food waste prevention, rescue, and recovery. They would be administered to prioritize maximizing greenhouse gas emission reductions; eliminating barriers to the rescue and consumption of edible food that would otherwise be wasted; developing stable funding programs for potential recipients to be aware of; and preferring options according to a specified management hierarchy. If funds were specifically appropriated for it, the grants could be used for projects to prevent the surplus of unsold, uneaten food from food businesses or to improve procedures for food donations; projects to improve and reduce the transportation of donated foods and management of cold chains; programs to support the establishment and expansion of wasted food reduction programs to benefit vulnerable communities; and food waste tracking and analytics pilot projects. The Department could award these grants competitively or non-competitively, and would have to prioritize projects benefiting overburdened communities.
The Center would also be required to develop and administer grants to support the implementation of the bill’s requirements and those of chapter 180, Laws of 2022, which is about waste management and organic materials. Priority would be given to grants implementing source separated organics collection and programs for businesses that are required to arrange for organic material management. The Department would have to provide assistance to each local government that demonstrated eligibility for these grants, and would not be allowed to require matching funds from them.
The Center would convene a work group with representatives from specified agencies and stakeholders to address mechanisms to mandate or otherwise improve the rescue of edible food waste from commercial generators, including food services, retail establishments, and food processors. It would consider timelines, exemptions, administration, enforcement, and other logistics to phase in edible food donation programs, incentives, or requirements; as well as the systems needed to support increased donations by commercial generators and whether that certain system components wewre in place before requiring any commercial donations. It would assess asset gaps and food infrastructure development needs, facilitate the creation of networks and partnerships to address those and develop innovative partnerships and models where appropriate. It would consider actions taken, costs, and lessons learned by other US jurisdictions with policies for reducing edible commercially generated food waste and through voluntary pilot projects carried out by commercial generators of food waste. Ecology would submit a report to the legislature by September 1, 2025, with the recommendations of the work group.
The bill would have the Department of Agriculture create a commodities donation grant program for one or more nonprofit food cooperative organizations to acquire food at risk of being wasted directly from food producers for distribution to hunger relief organizations. It would rely on existing infrastructure and similar current programs to maximize short term benefits and expedite grants; be designed to achieve efficiencies of scale, and give priority to organizations that have at least five years doing similar work. It would compensate producers for production costs and postharvest logistical and administrative costs that facilitated the acquisition and distribution of the food. The bill declares the Legislature’s intention to consistently allocate at least $25 million per biennium to this program.
The bill would double the size of the school awards in the Waste Not program, to $10,000 a year, and declare the Legislature’s intention to consistently allocate at least $1 million per biennium to that program.
After March 2027, jurisdictions accepting food waste in their source separated organics collection programs would be required to collect every week instead of 26 weeks a year, unless they reduced the volume or odor of the waste somehow and got a waiver from Ecology. Beginning in April 2030 jurisdictions would have to provide source-separated organic solid waste collection services to all customers, and accept food waste. With a few exceptions, everyone would have to use the curbside program to dispose of organics. The bill shifts the rules about exempted areas in various ways. It requires at least ten hours a year of independent training in organic materials management for compost and anaerobic digester facility managers and supervisors. Starting in 2026 it would require a business that generates at 96 gallons of organic waste a week to have management services for it. (Currently, this isn’t required unless you have at least 4 cubic yards a week.) It would require uniform color coding and labeling on collection bins across the state. It would prohibit using organic wastes contaminated with clopyralid, aminopyralid, or other picolinic acid herbicides as inputs or feedstocks in an organic materials management facility.
The bill would require packaging labels about food quality to say “Best by…” and those about food safety to say “Use by…”. It would prohibit labels saying “Sell by”, and labels saying “Pull by” or “Pull date” on perishable food packaging, though that information could be displayed in a date and month format that consumers couldn’t decipher readily. (You could still have labels indicating when food was packaged or processed, or saying it was best consumed within a certain number of days after being opened.) There’d be required signs about the new labeling in stores over 10,000 sq. ft. Authority to enforce the requirements could be delegated to local health jurisdictions, and would be required to primarily be in response to complaints; there’d be penalties of up to $500 a day for violations. The bill would also have the Departments of Agriculture and Ecology provide education and outreach activities, as well as technical assistance and guidance on request for businesses required to communicate a quality or safety date on food packaging. After two notices including information, violations of the bill’s labeling requirements would be subject to fines of up to $500 a day.
The bill would prohibit plastic stickers on produce, and add new specifications for when wood or fiber-based materials can be labeled “compostable”, and for coloring film plastic bags to help customers tell which are compostable and which need to be discarded as waste. It specifies requirements for labeling products as “home compostable.” It requires jurisdictions to notify Ecology if they choose to enforce the current prohibitions against claiming plastic products are “compostable” or “biodegradable” when they’re not.
It would authorize local jurisdictions to amend the State building code to provide adequate space for locating organic waste and recycling containers with garbage containers, or require posting of signs notifying residents where those containers are.