Second Substitute House Bill 2271 amends and adds multiple sections in chapter 70A.245 RCW, reenacts and amends RCW 43.21B.110, and adds a new procurement section to chapter 39.26 RCW to establish statewide minimum postconsumer recycled content (PCRC) requirements for specified plastic products. The bill defines new product categories (PCRC 2.0) and producers, creates registration and reporting duties, and imposes phased recycled-content percentage requirements by product type and manufacture date. It modifies existing law and creates new statutory duties, compliance procedures, fee authority, and penalty authority administered by the Department of Ecology. The bill sets specific percentage targets and effective manufacture dates for beverage containers, household cleaning and personal care product containers, plastic trash bags, rigid plastic containers, roll carts, and film plastics; requires producers of PCRC 1.0 and PCRC 2.0 products to register annually (with April 1, 2022 and April 1, 2027 deadlines respectively); requires annual reporting and third‑party certification (ISO/IEC 17065) beginning January 1, 2030; authorizes the Department of Ecology to set fees to cover implementation costs; and prescribes enforcement including audits, corrective action plans, and civil penalties. Beginning June 1 after the first compliance year, monetary penalties are calculated annually by a shortfall formula multiplied by $0.30 per pound of deficit, with provisions for reductions, payment schedules, and appeals to the Pollution Control Hearings Board. The bill also authorizes the Department of Ecology to review and temporarily exclude product types for technical infeasibility, forbids local governments from imposing competing recycled-content mandates, requires state procurement preferences for compliant products beginning in 2030, adds an appeals hook to the hearings board for department decisions on recycled-content matters, and includes severability. Several provisions in the extracted text are incomplete or unclear: the full definition of "PCRC 1.0" is missing, some statutory cross-references and penalty calculation subsections are cut off, a listed deadline appears as the invalid date "September 31st," and an expiration date mentioned in the bill header is not provided in the extracted facts.

If enacted, the bill will force makers, brand owners, importers and first distributors of many plastic products sold in Washington to meet phased minimum percentages of postconsumer recycled plastic by specific manufacture dates (for example 15–50% for many beverage bottles between 2023 and 2031, 50% targets by the 2030s for household containers, and stepped increases for trash bags and certain rigid and film plastics starting 2023–2030). These producers must register and annually report pounds of virgin and recycled resin by type, provide third‑party certification of recycled content (ISO/IEC 17065) beginning in 2030, pay annual fees set by the Department of Ecology to cover implementation costs (due May 1), and face a per‑pound penalty formula ($0.30 per pound of shortfall) and possible civil fines for reporting or labeling violations; collected fees and penalties go to state recycling accounts to fund administration. State procurement will shift beginning April 1, 2030 toward buying only listed plastic items from producers who comply, increasing market demand for compliant products, while local governments cannot impose their own competing recycled‑content mandates though they may set higher standards for their own purchases. The practical effects are higher material and compliance costs for affected producers (to source quality recycled resin, change product formulations, obtain certification, complete reporting, and pay fees or penalties), more administrative and enforcement work within Ecology funded by those fees, and greater guaranteed state demand for compliant products. The law allows temporary exclusions for technical infeasibility and annual reviews of targets, so companies facing supply or regulatory conflicts may get limited relief, but some key details are incomplete in the provided text (for example the full PCRC 1.0 definition, certain rulemaking procedures, and an apparent deadline typo), leaving uncertainty about how some classifications and timing will be applied in practice.