Reduce Packaging That Contains Toxins

Guy Jacob | January 22, 2024 | Newsday Opinion

One thing that environmentalists and industry agree on is that bottled water is merely one packaging product in an ever-expanding ambition to package food and beverage products in plastic containers “‘Nanoplastics’ and health: What to know,” News, Jan. 14]. More than half of all plastics ever produced have been made since 2000.

Common sense tells us that this is neither needed, sustainable, nor healthy. All we need to do is look around us to know that we cannot recycle our way out of this problem.

The New York Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act is the visionary legislation that we must pass to get a handle on our inexorable toxic waste.

It will reduce plastic packaging by 50% gradually over 12 years. The bill prohibits certain toxic chemicals commonly found in packaging: the forever class of chemicals known as PFAS, lead, mercury, formaldehyde, bisphenols and toluene.

And it will save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars because companies will be required to pay for the management and recycling of their packaging waste.

Because industry is fighting hard to defeat this bill, we need the same bipartisan, informed moral courage that our legislators have demonstrated when they stood tall to protect our families and our future in the past.

— Guy Jacob, Freeport

The writer is the conservation co-chair of the South Shore Audubon Society.

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