2021-08-25 EMC minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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3 Rep. Lowen said she could pull up the HD1 of the bill. The typical cost of a contracted study would be between $100,000 to $200,000. If we pass a bill in the 2022 session it would become law in July 2022. The study normally could not be completed by the start of the following session because of the time it takes to produce a scope of work, come to agreement on contracts, put it out for bid, and go through the procurement process, unless DOH decides to do it internally. If the Legislature passes a bill in 2022, it would be to ask for a study to come back before the 2024 session. It’s a year and a half to complete, which doesn’t always meet the sense of urgency that we all have, but this of is the pace of government. Chair Adams asked whether, as other states try to implement EPR, there would be some base information, and then we could look at what is different here, so we are not starting from zero. Rep. Lowen said the most important thing we could get out of the study are the Hawai‘i-specific questions. What would the cost be to the State and the taxpayers, as well as taxes that get 4 passed on to consumers? Washington State did a studyin advance of introducing legislation, so there is a lot of information out there about this, and we can learn from what is going on in Maine. We can see what happens. That information is out there that will behelpful. It would be more senseeconomically to have a nationalpolicy, to have legislation at a federal level that applied equally for every state. A carbon tax is a completely different topic, but as an example of an issue that is being discussed, wecould do it in Hawai‘i, butit would impact Hawai‘i disproportionally. It would make a lot more sense from an economic sense to have something federally or even internationally, even. So it’s kind of the same with this kind of legislation. But we need to keep moving forward. She absolutely supports doing something at the State level for this. Commissioner Robinson asked Rep. Lowen to speak more about the bill in Washington regarding the requirement of the use of recycled materials. Rep. Lowen said the Washington bill has a requirement for the manufacturers to show they are taking back X percent. Say we pass a bill and have the program start in 2024. Then it might be X amount in 2025, with percentages that increase over time. We basically modeled our bill after the bill that Washington had introduced, in large part. The Washington bill might have put in specific percentages, and what we did, rather than putting those specifics in was to say that DOH could make rules. And we also added requirements for post-consumer recycled content. Because that is kind of the piece where do not want EPR legislation to be designed in such a way that it makes it allowable for production to continue at the same rate, as long as things are being collected and taken back, and then maybe disposed of elsewhere in another country. But we would design it where there is some kind of incentive for source reduction designed into the policy. 3 HB 1316 HD1 does not appropriate specific funding amounts. This would have been agreed upon in later drafts, had the bill advanced further in committee. 4 Link to study: https://kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/dnrp/solid-waste/about/planning/documents/task-force- EPR-policy-framework.ashx 9