WashPIRG supports the RENEW Act

WashPIRG

On January 18, 2022, the Washington Senate Committee on Environment, Energy and Technology held a public hearing for Senate Bill 5697 (Das), the “RENEW Act,” legislation proposed to modernize our state’s recycling system. WashPIRG’s Advocate Nicole Walter submitted the following written testimony in support.

Chair Carlyle and Members of the Committee,

My name is Nicole Walter and I am the Advocate with WashPIRG, a citizen-based advocacy organization with thousands of members across the state that stands up for the public interest.

WashPIRG supports Senate Bill 5697, the RENEW Act, because we have a waste problem that we cannot recycle our way out of with our current system – we need to hold producers responsible for the waste they create and modernize our recycling systems.

We live in a society that encourages us to consume and throw things away as fast as possible. Too many of these single-use items end up littering our streets, clogging our landfills, and polluting our waterways because we simply produce too much waste for our current systems. Not every Washingtonian has access to curbside recycling, and, despite the great progress we’ve made to eliminate the single-use items we can go without (like plastic grocery bags and polystyrene foam), we still cannot seem to escape all of this “stuff.”

That’s because producers continue to flood our shelves and our shopping carts with single-use items, then offload the consumer guilt, management burden and end-of-life costs of their waste onto individuals and communities. The plastic manufacturing industry, for example, has known for decades that only a fraction of their product ever ends up getting recycled. But the industry has spent millions of dollars to convince us that recycling is enough to address our waste crisis – so it could turn around and make billions selling new plastic.

Producer responsibility systems change the status quo. Under the RENEW Act, producers would have to pay to clean-up their single-use pollution. This would lead to the industry making more durable, more recyclable, and less wasteful products, and help us to provide stronger standardized recycling and waste disposal systems throughout the state. Altogether, this means less pollution in our communities and environment.

The momentum for producer responsibility is growing, with Maine and Oregon passing the first laws in the nation in 2021, and other countries leading the way. The RENEW Act is a model policy to continue to make Washington a leader in reducing our single-use waste, protecting our environment, and strengthening our communities.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify on this important issue.

Sincerely,

Nicole Walter

WashPIRG Advocate