2021-08-25 EMC minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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County of Honolulu has right now. This is for takeout plastic utensils and straws to be provided only upon request. To do something like that is just a small measure but it is a source reduction. There was also a requirement for a minimum of post-consumer content in plastic beverage 2 containers and other plastic containers. So Washington State passed this bill last year. The idea is it incentivizes manufacturers to use more recycled content, and also to have a motivation to take back more of the recycled themselves, because they have a requirement to use recycled content. So we are redrafting those bills to introduce both as separate measures, she said. For next year, we will have a bill for the electronic waste recycling program. That has not been touched in a long time so there is room to increase the fees and increase the accountability on that. And then we will see what the conversation is for other types of products. One that could be a good idea would be a producer takeback of prescription drugs, which would be also good for the environment. We definitely will have a whole slate of bills on this topic, she said, and was open to answering questions. Commissioner Olson said he was very appreciative of her refusal to let this go. We have been talking a great deal about how this would work out, and our consensus seemed to be that assessing the fee at the point of purchase or through the distributer would probably be a lot more successful than trying to go back to the manufacturer particularly for the outer islands, because it goes through so many different hands. Rep. Lowen was not sure about what authority the counties have to impose fees on certain types of products. Essentially with the deposit beverage program, we essentially have a point of sale additional fee that incents the consumer to recycle, even though now for some there is not a recycling program, unfortunately. That is one policy approach. EPR is a different policy approach because it does loop in the manufacturer, the producer. For both types of policy proposals, there is always the question of equity. Any kinds of flat rate fees that are imposed are going to be more punitive toward lower-income families. When the question comes up, that would be a concern. Commissioner Olson said the tradeoff there is you are also trying to educate people to the cost that they are paying for Product X, as opposed to Product Y, and obviously the products with the lower fee have less environmental impact. Chair Adams said we have raised it a couple times at meetings, and perhaps what we can do is try to explore trying to find that answer about can the county try to institute any kind of fee like that? She said she would put that on her “to do” list. Commissioner Olson said it was a question of “can we now” versus “can we later.” Just because we cannot do it today doesn’t mean that we cannot get legislation to put us in a position to deal with it. Because each of the islands has a separate set of problems to deal with once you are confronted with having to deal with it. 2 WA Chapter 313 (2021): https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=5022&Year=2021 7