2025 legislative review
AWB Government Affairs Director Peter Godlewski testifies in front of the Senate Environment, Energy & Technology Committee in support of House Bill 1975, a bill to improve the Climate Commitment Act. Passage of the AWB-supported bill was a positive outcome from this year’ s legislative session.
The bill was an Attorney General’ s agency request legislation. AWB worked with the AG’ s office to try to address our concerns, but ultimately were not able to resolve them. The bill ended up dying in Appropriations, having passed the Senate. We expect this bill to come back, and we’ ll be talking to the AGs office in the interim.
SB 5628 concerning lead in cookware
Passed / AWB Supported sponsor: Sen. Paul Harris, R-Vancouver
Finally, in a piece of good news, AWB worked with a number of our members and Rep. Chipalo Street, D-Seattle, to pass SB 5628, which made some important changes to the lead in cookware bill which passed last year. That bill banned the sale cookware with a lead content greater than five parts per million. The way the bill was originally drafted, it brought in large appliances such as refrigerators, range hoods, and ovens, which was not the intent of the legislation. While working through these issues for the large appliances, the issue of the five parts per million limit came to the forefront. It turned out that no cookware manufacturer is able to guarantee that they can meet five parts per million of lead content, which is sometimes higher than the natural lead in the alloys they’ re using. A lot of conversations were had around how the lead content is tested for, and differences in testing methods and how relevant they were to the actual use of a product. The bill did pass with some compromise language on the five parts per million. We expect there could be an ongoing conversation over the next couple of years with that exemption expiring in 2027.
26 association of washington business