Building on a 2025 Washington law that jacked up fines for littering, a new bill would create a task force focused on curtailing litter statewide, including keeping it out of parks, rest areas, recreation lands and other public places.
Introduced by Rep. Mary Dye, R-Pomeroy, HB 2284 would direct the Washington State Department of Ecology to assemble a task force composed of experts and stakeholders from government agencies — from the state Department of Transportation to Washington State Patrol — as well as from retail, tourism, hospitality and other industries.
According to the bill’s text, the task force would seek to answer questions such as: How can the state make it less expensive per mile to clean up litter? And how can “the most commonly littered types of litter” — cigarette butts, food wrappers and beer bottles, for example — find their way to trash or recycling bins?
The task force would devise policy recommendations and submit them to the state legislature in a report by mid-November 2027, the bill says. Central to the work would be the state ecology department’s 2022 Washington Statewide Litter Study.
HB 2284 also looks to revisit Washington’s plans for carryout bags.
It would keep the current minimum thickness of plastic carryout bags at 2.25 mils — one mil equals one-thousandth of an inch — rather than allow it to become 4 mils in 2028, as it would under updates to the state law that banned single-use carryout plastic bags.
The charge for the 2.25-mil bags would remain at 12 cents each, and the charge for the 4-mil bags would remain at 16 cents each. But the bill would make permanent that 4-cent difference, which is a temporary penalty set to expire in 2028. The penalty is meant to discourage people from taking too many of the plastic-heavy 4-mil bags. Paper bags would still cost 8 cents each.
Dye has contrasted her bill with one sponsored by House Democrats that, in order to encourage consumers to use their own reusable bags, would ban film plastic carryout bags altogether and raise the paper bag fee to 20 cents.
When Washington banned 0.5-mil single-use carry out plastic bags in 2020, policymakers hoped consumers would want to reuse the more durable 2.25-mil bags being offered.
However, “people aren’t reusing them,” said Rep. Mark Klicker, R-Walla Walla, who is co-sponsoring Dye’s bill.
A Washington State University study found that the thicker bags frequently get tossed out, too, leading to even more plastic in the environment — the opposite of what the eco-minded law was meant to accomplish.
It was Klicker’s anti-littering bill that Gov. Bob Ferguson signed into law in May 2025. That bill originally had language establishing a littering solutions task force, but the idea didn’t survive the legislative process. Dye’s bill revives it.
HB 2284 also has language adding bags made with potato starch to the list of compostable film bags that may be used for carryout, “which is really cool,” Klicker said.
He said the change will help in manufacturing the bags while helping potato producers and offering another biodegradable bag option.
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