Washington residents will soon face heftier fines for littering and higher prices for plastic grocery bags.
A new law signed by Gov. Bob Ferguson on Saturday also delays requirements for retailers to offer thicker bags for sale from Jan. 1, 2026, until 2028.
The Legislature will use the two years to review the state’s reusable bag policies, Ferguson said. Retailers who sell thicker bags before 2028 will be penalized 4 cents a bag, under the new law.
“We’re called the Evergreen State and is it really evergreen with all the litter?” said Rep. Mark Klicker, R-Walla Walla, sponsor of House Bill 1293. “Our freeways, our interstates, are just packed with litter, it’s horrible.”
The state’s low fines could be a reason why “people don’t really care” about littering, Klicker said, noting Oregon has a higher penalty for littering. Washington’s new law raises the penalty from a class three to a class two civil infraction.
The fine for littering up to 1 cubic foot, or roughly the size of a backpack, will increase from $103 to $256, which includes all state-mandated charges, according to legislative staff. The new law will take effect in late July.
Over the past five years, the number of Washington State Patrol encounters with suspected litterers decreased from 636 in 2019 to 258 in 2024. Most of those resulted in verbal warnings rather than citations, according to state patrol data.
While the State Patrol tallied fewer contacts, the amount of litter has not decreased, Klicker said. He originally wanted a task force to study possible ways to better deal with the problem, but that part was removed.
The Senate added language to delay the date when retail establishments would be required to provide thicker, reusable plastic bags to customers.
“Increasing the thickness of the bag isn’t going to help people keep the bags,” Klicker said. “They’ll throw the bags away anyway, so it creates that much more litter into the landfills.”
In 2020, the state passed a law banning single-use plastic bags and required retail establishments to offer paper bags or thicker, reusable plastic bags for sale to consumers.
Reusable plastic bags are currently sold for 8 cents and required to have a thickness of 2.25 mils. One mil is a unit of thickness equal to one-thousandth of an inch. The 2020 law increased the price to 12 cents and the thickness requirement to 4 mils on Jan. 1, 2026. But the Senate delayed the change in thickness by two years.
Retailers who sell reusable plastic bags with a thickness of at least 4 mils before 2028 will be penalized 4 cents a bag, meaning customers will see a total charge of 16 cents for each bag on their receipts.
The 4 cent penalty will be deposited in the Waste Reduction, Recycling, and Litter Control Account to address the negative impacts of litter.
The price for paper bags will remain at 8 cents per bag.
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