Guest commentary: Tired of packaging? Let’s fix it

We’re tired of packaging. Every day, we encounter wasteful packaging, from plastic juice pouches to the warehouse’s worth of plastic packaging and cardboard that surrounds almost anything you buy online. 

We all deserve to live in a world without needless waste, but unfortunately most manufacturers design products and their packaging with minimal thought about what happens later. As a result, many things we use are impossible to recycle in recycling facilities because they combine materials that aren’t easy to separate, such as the foil and paper laminated together to seal a ramen bowl. Thin film wrap and plastic bags clog the equipment — costing labor, time and money.  

We are the ones bearing the costs of these problems, simply because manufacturers don’t apply the same level of engineering to their packaging as they do to their products. We pay in our utility bills for the collection and sorting of these materials. We also pay because we live in a world damaged by pointless waste. 

As the avalanche of packaging and consumer goods has grown ever larger, so has the cost of recycling. Many Washingtonians have seen their recycling bills rise by up to almost 40% in the last seven years. Budget pressures have pushed many Washington communities to decrease their services. Cities like Tacoma have implemented recycling surcharges. Eleven Washington counties offer no curbside recycling at all.

In Washington, more than 50% of consumer packaging and paper waste is landfilled or incinerated. Each year, this means we are throwing away more than $104 million in valuable materials that might have been made into new items. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can reduce the use of unnecessary packaging and rebuild the state’s recycling system and market for recycled materials. 

Unfortunately, a policy that would have helped solve these problems through establishing extended producer responsibility (EPR) for paper and packaging, and a bottle bill program, failed to advance in the 2023 legislative session. Fortunately, these policies will be reintroduced again soon. 

How can these policies address our issues with waste and recycling? First, EPR will make brand owners and manufacturers financially responsible for the end-of-life of packaging they use for their products and can create incentives to redesign packaging to reduce waste, and be reusable.

Additionally, through shifting the cost of recycling collection and processing to producers, access to curbside recycling services will be expanded to all Washingtonians at no cost to residents and municipalities. A producer responsibility program for packaging will also establish one clear, unified list of what can be recycled across the state, reducing confusion and thus, reducing contamination by items that cannot be recycled.  

In 2024, state lawmakers can jumpstart efforts to reduce waste and improve recycling outcomes in Washington. We urge legislators to pass a bill establishing extended producer responsibility next session to create recycling systems that better serve Washington communities. 

Dan Hammill is the Ward 3 representative on the Bellingham City Council; former Bellingham resident Sarah Rumbaugh is the District 2 representative on the Tacoma City Council. The views above are theirs alone and not necessarily those of their respective city councils.