SB5837 – Removing plastic carryout bags as an option for use at retail establishments; making the 8¢ charge for paper carryout bags permanent.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Salomon (D; 32nd District; Shoreline) (Co-Sponsors Das, Hunt and Nobles – Ds)
Current status –Referred to the Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Comments –
Plastic bags are clearly bad for the environment; whether they’re bad for the climate is unclear; it depends on how often they’d are reused, what bags are used to replace them, how bags are dealt with at the end of their useful lives, and complicated full life cycle estimates of the associated emissions.

Summary –
The bill would advance the date after which retail establishments may not provide reusable film plastic carryout bags to a retail customer or a person at an event from January 1st, 2026 to January 1st, 2023. (The current law would have allowed them to continue providing bags of at least four mils if the 2025 Legislature hadn’t amended the requirements in response to a study it ordered.) (This bill would add an exemption for bags to contain or wrap hot food.)

It would make the 8¢ charge for a paper carryout bag permanent, and continue the 8¢ charge for a compliant reusable plastic carryout bag until the end of 2022. It would eliminate provisions for increasing the charges for them to 12¢ in 2026, for the increase from 20% to 40% in the required post-consumer recycled content of reusable plastic carry-out bags that’s currently scheduled for July 1st, 2022, and for the increase in their minimum thickness from 2.25 mils to four mils that’s currently scheduled for January 1st, 2026. These would be superceded, as I understand the bill, since retail stores would not be allowed to provide them at all after the end of 2022.