SB6005 – Improving solid waste management outcomes.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Lovelett (D; 40th District; Anacortes) (Co-Sponsor Nguyen, D)
Current status – Scheduled for a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology at 1:30 PM on Tuesday January 23rd.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB2049 is a companion bill in the House.
See also HB1900.
Comments – The House bill is a revised version of HB1131, which was introduced by the same sponsors last session, was much amended, and eventually died in Rules. (Its companion bill, SB5154, died in Ways and Means.) The new version is 104 pages long, so trying to summarize its details seems ill advised; I’ve tried to cover the important points.
Summary
The bill would create a system funded and managed by producers for dealing with used packaging and paper products sold or supplied to consumers for personal use, and would create new requirements for postconsumer recycled content.
Producer Product Responsibility Organizations –
Producers would have to join a producer responsibility organization, report annually to the Department of Ecology on their activities and the covered materials for which they were responsible, pay their shares of the cost of running the program including needed infrastructure investments, and pay an annual fee to cover Ecology’s costs in administering and enforcing the program. Producers would fund a statewide needs assessment of solid waste issues. Each organization would also provide up to $5 million/year or 4% of its annual expenditures for a packaging financial assistance program providing grants for governments, non-profits and private organizations to support programs to reduce the negative environmental impacts of covered products through reuse.
In consultation with stakeholders, an advisory council and the UTC, producer organizations would have to develop five year plans for dealing with their covered materials. These would have to meet a long list of requirements plus any added by Ecology, would be due by October 1st 2027 (and be subject to approval by Ecology) and would have to be implemented by January 2029 and updated regularly. Each organization’s plan would set performance rates including an overall recycling rate for its covered products, a recycling rate for each category of covered materials, a source reduction rate for eliminating plastic components, and (starting with its second plan) a minimum reuse rate. Proposed rates would have to be justified if they differed from those in the most recent performance rates study, and improve over time until Ecology determined that the maximum technically achievable process had been reached. Reporting by organizations on their performance would begin in July 2030. There are requirements for outside evaluations if organizations fail to achieve these rates, and Ecology could require corrective actions or impose fines of up to $1,000 a day for failures to comply with the bill’s requirements.
Plans would also include arrangements for continuing service if an organization stopped providing it. and for consumer education and outreach activities to support the achievement of the performance rates. Producer organizations would structure members’ fees to incentivize the redesign of covered products to be reusable, recyclable, or compostable; as well incentivizing preventing waste and reducing consumer packaging.
A consultant would do the needs assessment of the solid waste system, covering a long list of issues such as current and future feasible infrastructure and services, costs, education and outreach, criteria for handling different products, labor and social justice concerns, litter and marine debris prevention, toxic substances in covered products, and any other items the Department added. The advisory council, stakeholders and the UTC would have an opportunity to review and comment on scope for the study and on the draft, and Ecology would be authorized to update it at five year intervals.
Ecology would be required to consider a variety of factors to identify materials and methods for the uniform statewide collection of covered products for recycling, categorizing them as suitable for residential curbside collection, drop-off collection, and alternative collection. (Approved pilot programs could try curbside collection of additional materials that were not on Ecology’s list.) The bill would prohibit claiming covered products were recyclable if Ecology didn’t categorize them that way, and prohibit making deceptive claims about their percentages of recycled content or their compostability.
Organizations would have to collaborate with and reimburse the costs of regulated private curbside collection programs as well as those existing government programs that chose to participate. (They’d have to provide a variety of other convenient ways to recover the different categories of materials on Ecology’s list, including collection sites all around the state. Getting materials into the system would have to be free, easily accessible, and meet various other requirements. (Retailers could choose to host collection sites or events.) If organizations contracted with service providers to meet their obligations, those providers would have to meet various labor and reporting standards. .
Programs would have to prioritize waste reduction, then recycling, before incinerating or landfilling materials. There’d be requirements about labor, health and the responsible management of materials at recovery facilities; for reporting on those by producer organizations; and for detailed reporting on their operations by processing facilities.
Requirements for Postconsumer Recycled Content –
The bill would replace current requirements for recycled content in various products; these would apply to plastic containers for household cleaning products; personal care products; beverages, milk and wine; plastic tubs for food products, thermoform containers; and plastic single-use cups. Producers of these products would have to belong to producer responsibility organizations and and maintain certification of their compliance with the bill’s requirements from accredited third parties. Minimum recycled content requirements for these different products would come into effect at different levels in different years between 2025 and 2036. The producer responsibility organizations would report to Ecology annually on their members’ use of postconsumer recycled content. The department could adjust the requirements depending on various factors, and assess penalties for failures to meet them. The bill adds new recycled content requirements for collection bins, pots and trays, and pesticide containers made of plastic; it also makes changes to the definitions of producers.
In addition –
The bill would create an advisory council with representatives appointed by the Director of Ecology from ten groups. It would review, comment, advise, and make recommendations on the needs assessment, Ecology’s lists, producer organizations plans, reports, and other aspects of the bill’s programs.
Ecology and the Department of Revenue would do a study of the bill’s effects on the litter rates of covered products and containers, and make recommendations on possible improvements to the structure of the tax.
Beginning in 2029, jurisdictions’ solid waste plans would have to provide for curbside collection of source separated recyclables from single-family and multi-family residences served by curbside garbage collection. (Counties could choose to require the collection of materials that Ecology categorized for curbside recycling collection at drop-off locations in areas regulated by the UTC.) Ecology would create a model comprehensive solid waste plan jurisdictions could adopt rather than developing their own plans for source separation programs.