Finally! Washington State House gives giant thumbs up to single use plastic bag ban

Leg­is­la­tion that would ban sin­gle use plas­tic bags at the statewide lev­el is one step clos­er to becom­ing law thanks to a big vote today in the Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in sup­port of Mona Das’ ESSB 5323.

After approv­ing floor amend­ments, six­ty-sev­en rep­re­sen­ta­tives vot­ed to pass ESSB 5323, includ­ing a big con­tin­gent of Repub­li­cans, while only twen­ty-nine rep­re­sen­ta­tives vot­ed nay. ESSB 5323 is now on its way back to the Senate.

The roll call was follows:

ESSB 5323
Plas­tic bags
House vote on Final Pas­sage as Amend­ed by the House
3/7/2020

Yeas: 67; Nays: 29; Excused: 2

Vot­ing Yea: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Bergquist, Boehnke, Callan, Cham­bers, Chap­man, Chopp, Cody, Davis, DeBolt, Doglio, Dolan, Duerr, Dye, Enten­man, Eslick, Fey, Fitzgib­bon, Frame, Gildon, Goehn­er, Good­man, Gregerson, Hansen, Har­ris, Hud­gins, John­son, J., Kil­duff, Kir­by, Klo­ba, Lekanoff, Lovick, Macri, Mead, Mor­gan, Orms­by, Ortiz-Self, Orwall, Pel­lic­ciot­ti, Peter­son, Pet­ti­grew, Pol­let, Ramel, Ramos, Ric­cel­li, Robin­son, Ryu, San­tos, Sells, Senn, Shew­make, Slat­ter, Smith, Springer, Steele, Stonier, Sul­li­van, Tar­leton, Thai, Tharinger, Valdez, Van Wer­ven, Walen, Walsh, Wylie, Ybar­ra, Young, Jinkins

Vot­ing Nay: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Barkis, Blake, Caldier, Chan­dler, Cor­ry, Dent, Dufault, Gra­ham, Grif­fey, Hoff, Irwin, Jenkin, Klip­pert, Kraft, Kretz, Leav­itt, MacEwen, May­cum­ber, McCaslin, Mos­bruck­er, Orcutt, Rude, Schmick, Shea, Stokes­bary, Suther­land, Vick, Volz, Wilcox

Excused: Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Apple­ton, Paul

Had State Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Sher­ry Apple­ton and Dave Paul been present to vote, ESSB 5323 like­ly would have received six­ty-nine aye votes, which would have matched — exact­ly — the lev­el of sup­port that ESSB 5323 received in our last statewide research poll. We announced our find­ing last Jan­u­ary at a press con­fer­ence in Olympia with Sen­a­tor Das, State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Strom Peter­son, Heather Trim of Zero Waste Wash­ing­ton, and Gus of Surfrid­er Foundation.

In our poll, 69% said they agreed that sin­gle use plas­tic bags should be pro­hib­it­ed, while just 26% were opposed. 6% said they were not sure.

Two Democ­rats vot­ed no on the bill: Mari Leav­itt and Bri­an Blake.

Four­teen Repub­li­cans vot­ed aye: Matt Boehnke, Kel­ly Cham­bers, Richard DeBolt, Mary Dye, Car­olyn Eslick, Chris Gildon, Kei­th Goehn­er, Paul Har­ris, Nor­ma Smith, Mike Steele, Luanne Van Wer­ven, Jim Walsh, Alex Ybar­ra, and Jesse Young.

ESSB 5323 is an NPI leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ty for the 2020 ses­sion. Last year, the bill passed by the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate with bipar­ti­san sup­port, but did not receive a vote in the House. Now, at last, with just a few days to go until Sine Die, the House has con­sid­ered the bill and resound­ing­ly passed it.

Accord­ing to the Nation­al Con­fer­ence of State Leg­is­la­tures (NCSL), eight states have so far banned sin­gle-use plas­tic bags: Cal­i­for­nia, Con­necti­cut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, New York, Ore­gon and Ver­mont. Five of those states enact­ed their bans last year, when Sen­a­tor Das’ SB 5323 was ini­tial­ly introduced.

On he oppo­site coast, law­mak­ers in New Jer­sey are cur­rent­ly con­sid­er­ing a ban on sin­gle use, dis­pos­able bags (both plas­tic and paper).

If Wash­ing­ton adopts SB 5323 this year — and it must — then the entire Pacif­ic coast (with the excep­tion of Alas­ka) will have sin­gle use plas­tic bag bans.

Many cities and coun­ties with­in Wash­ing­ton already have their own plas­tic bag bans; Edmonds was the first to adopt one near­ly a decade ago. But most local juris­dic­tions still don’t have one. If Sen­ate Bill 5323 is enact­ed, then the entire state will be com­mit­ted to tak­ing an impor­tant step to reduce plas­tic pollution.

What makes thin, sin­gle use plas­tic bags so awful? In a sen­tence, they are ener­gy inten­sive to make, used and dis­posed of rather quick­ly, and then per­sist in our envi­ron­ment for an extreme­ly long time. Here are ten facts about sin­gle use plas­tic bags that you should know from the Cen­ter For Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty:

1. Amer­i­cans use 100 bil­lion plas­tic bags a year, which require twelve mil­lion bar­rels of oil to manufacture.
2. It only takes about four­teen plas­tic bags for the equiv­a­lent of the gas required to dri­ve one mile.
3. The aver­age Amer­i­can fam­i­ly takes home almost 1,500 plas­tic shop­ping bags a year.
4. Accord­ing to Waste Man­age­ment, only one per­cent of plas­tic bags are returned for recy­cling. That means that the aver­age fam­i­ly only recy­cles fif­teen bags a year; the rest end up in land­fills or as litter.
5. Up to eighty per­cent of ocean plas­tic pol­lu­tion enters the ocean from land.
6. At least two hun­dred and six­ty-sev­en dif­fer­ent species have been affect­ed by plas­tic pol­lu­tion in the ocean.
7. 100,000 marine ani­mals are killed by plas­tic bags annually.
8. One in three leatherback sea tur­tles have been found with plas­tic in their stomachs.
9. Plas­tic bags are used for an aver­age of twelve min­utes.
10. It takes five hun­dred (or more) years for a plas­tic bag to degrade in a land­fill. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the bags don’t break down com­plete­ly but instead pho­to-degrade, becom­ing microplas­tics that absorb tox­ins and con­tin­ue to pol­lute the environment.

The Earth is the one com­mon home that we all share… and we’re trash­ing it.

But we can change. And we must.

This bill gets us one step clos­er to build­ing a more sus­tain­able soci­ety that rejects the mantra of use it once and throw it away. We will con­tin­ue to work in sup­port of this bill until we get it in front of Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee for his signature.