AN ORDINANCE relating to the City of Seattle’s solid waste system; removing the sunset date for a five cent pass-through charge for certain recyclable paper bags; requiring certain compostable bags to be labeled and tinted green; adding a definition for compostable; and amending Section 21.36.100 of the Seattle Municipal Code.
Agenda Item three three Council Bill 118805 Wellington City Council The Waste System Removing the sunset date for a five cent pass recharge for certain recyclable paper bags required certain compostable bags to be labeled and tinted green. Add a definition for compostable and amending. 21.30 6.110 Seattle Means Barcode. The committee recommends the bill passed as amended. Customer. O'Brien Thank you. So this legislation will update a bill that was passed five years ago in 2011, and that was the time in which the city council passed legislation to ban plastic single use plastic bags within the city and require that for folks switching to a paper bag that there would be a five cent fee charged the $0.05 to be retained by the business that was giving out the the bag. That five cent fee requirement was to expire at the end of this year. This legislation would extend that indefinitely. This legislation also addresses one of the challenges we see around compostable bags. We like composting in the city. In fact, we require composting. But there's a lot of confusion in what types of plastic bags are compostable. I think a lot of folks are familiar with compostable branded plastic bags that we encourage people to use for managing their food waste. Those bags are often tinted green as a way to indicate that they are compostable. However, lots of other bags are also tinted green, and this is creating a lot of confusion among consumers. The confusion results in non compostable bags, regular plastic bags being put into the compost system. They're very difficult to remove. Often they can't be removed, little pieces of them contaminate the compost. It degrades the quality of the compost and sometimes means it's no longer compost and has to be rejected as waste. This legislation would require that bags that are not compostable not use the green coloring and also has a definition for what compostable is. It's consistent with the providers that provide composting in the region so that those bags will actually work in the system as intended. Thank you. Any comments? You know, Curtis, if it's leaking when you're carrying it, it's compostable. That's sort of the test. Of. All those in favor of, oh, it is a bill. Please call the role on the part of the bill. Johnson Suarez O'Brien Bagshaw Burgess Gonzalez, President Harrell. I. Seven in favor and unopposed. Bill passed and the chair was Simon. Please read the next agenda item.