The EPC will focus on modernizing recycling, electrifying school buses, and price gouging by greedy big oil companies in 2024 legislative session

Washington State’s Environmental Priorities Coalition is made up of 27 statewide environmental organizations working to safeguard our environment and the health of our communities through policy and budget advocacy at the Washington State Legislature. Every year, the Coalition comes together to select priorities to advance during the legislative session.

For the 2024 legislative session at the Washington State Legislature, coalition members chose the following three priorities:

1. Hold Oil Companies Accountable: We all need affordable ways to get around, but oil companies are price gouging you when fueling your car with gas. While we all struggled through the pandemic and inflation, oil companies made over $200 billion in profits in 2022 alone and then blamed our climate policies for high prices at the pump to deflect attention from their profits. Instead of investing in clean energy, they are pursuing oil and gas expansion and spending money on lobbying and misleading ads to fight cleaner options. We need oil companies to be transparent about how they set their prices. We need oil companies to be accountable for greenwashing and price gouging. Our legislators need to protect you by requiring oil industry transparency and accountability.
2. 100% Clean School Buses: All school kids deserve healthy, safe rides to school, but almost all school buses in our state currently run on diesel. Research shows that air pollution inside the bus can be more than four times worse than outside, meaning kids are especially exposed once they’re on their way to school. There are more than 10,000 diesel school buses transporting kids in Washington. With many models of electric school buses available, five other states have set a date in law by which new school buses must be 100% clean. Our Washington legislators can pass such a law and support our kids and school districts in this critical transition.
3. The Washington Recycling & Packaging Act (The WRAP Act): In this state, more than 50 percent of our consumer packaging and paper goes to landfills, rather than being recycled. Across the planet, plastic waste litters our shorelines and open spaces. It is time to modernize our recycling system, to reduce packaging and to decrease plastic pollution. The WRAP Act tackles these problems by creating a set of graduated fees on packaging manufacturers based on the recyclability/sustainability of their packaging. The funding generated from this fee will then be used to fund our recycling system in Washington, including improvements in infrastructure, uniform access to recycling for residents across the state, and a harmonized list of what people can recycle. Recycling and reuse targets will be set. This bill will have the added benefit of shifting the costs for the recycling system from ratepayers to the manufacturers that have created the problem.

To learn more, to read our one-pagers, and watch our press briefing click here