Join us this upcoming legislative session
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John,
Our environmental progress is at stake in 2024.
The important work to act on addressing dangerous pollution, supporting a thriving environment, and protecting the health of our communities requires bold action.
Washington’s 2024 legislative session starts January 8 and lasts 60 days. With a short session, our work must be unshakeable for people and the environment. Washington Conservation Action is part of the Environmental Priorities Coalition (EPC), which brings together more than 26 statewide environmental organizations to safeguard our environment and the health of our communities through policy and budget advocacy at the Washington State Legislature. This year, the EPC will focus on reducing plastic pollution, electrification of buses, and price gouging by big oil companies.
With the mounting impacts of climate change, polluters and their allies looking to roll back progress, salmon on the brink of extinction, land use planning underway, and plastic littering our environment and microplastics affecting our health, we need leaders standing up for people and the environment during the upcoming legislative session. Pollution doesn’t take time off, and neither will we.
To meet this moment, the Environmental Priorities Coalition’s three priorities for 2024 are:
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.
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.
The Washington Recycling And 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.
You will get more information on opportunities to take action in support of these priorities over the coming weeks. People power is how we make progress on these and other priorities in the legislature. Join us to make a difference in 2024!
Onward,
Darcy Nonemacher (she/her)
Government Affairs Director
Washington Conservation Action
