Judith Enck Challenges America’s Plastic Makers to a ‘Cheese Debate’
For Immediate Release: May 8, 2024
Contact: Marissa Solomon, marissa@pythiapublic.com, 734-330-0807
ALBANY, N.Y. — This morning, the Albany Times Union reported on the New York state Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (A5322B Glick / S4246B Harckham), and claims from opponents that the legislation would be a terrible nuisance to New Yorkers who absolutely cannot live without individually wrapped cheese slices. The Times Union stated:
“Opponents of the bill have also pointed to reporting from the New York Post saying that the bill would ban individually wrapped cheese.
While cheese slices that are completely wrapped in plastic in addition to being wrapped in outer packaging would face requirements to reduce packaging, Enck said the solution could be something done by many sliced cheese packages: placing strips of wax paper between slices.
‘Let’s have the cheese debate,’ Enck said. ‘I’m happy to have it.’”
Now, Enck is officially challenging America’s Plastic Makers — a plastics industry association pushing failing, polluting, and greenwashed “advanced recycling” technology — to the cheese debate.
“New Yorkers are stuck paying millions every year to throw away 10 billion pounds of garbage. But, amid this solid waste crisis, it’s clear that some multibillion-dollar corporations and their lobbyists are not ready for the world-shattering concept of separating cheese slices with wax paper — and they’d like to keep New Yorkers eating cheese individually wrapped in toxic, chemical-filled plastic. When America’s Plastic Makers are ready, I’m challenging them to The Cheese Debate to settle this once and for all.”
BACKGROUND
About the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act
The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act has serious momentum, with 80 cosponsors in the assembly and 35 in the senate — a majority in both houses. Earlier this week, the Assembly Codes and Ways and Means Committees passed the bill. In the senate, the legislation sits in the Finance Committee.
According to polling from Oceana, nearly 9 in 10 New Yorkers support policies that reduce single-use plastic. The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (S4246B Harckham/A5322AB Glick) will do just that by transforming the way our goods are packaged. It will dramatically reduce waste and ease the burden on taxpayers by making companies, not consumers, cover the cost of managing packaging. The bill will:
Reduce plastic packaging by 50% incrementally over 12 years;
After 12 years, all packaging — including plastic, glass, cardboard, paper, and metal — must meet a recycling rate of 70%;
Prohibit packaging’s worst toxic chemicals, including vinyl chloride, PFAS, and heavy metals;
Not allow the harmful process known as chemical recycling to be considered real recycling;
Establish a modest fee on packaging paid by product producers, with new revenue going to local taxpayers; and
Establish a new Office of Inspector General to ensure proper compliance.
Because the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act would provide meaningful support to communities, over 30 localities across the state have passed resolutions urging Albany leaders to pass the bill. The New York City Council recently passed a resolution in support, and the Adams administration released a memorandum of support in favor of the legislation.
Recently, more than 230 organizations and businesses — including Beyond Plastics, Environmental Advocates, NYPIRG, Earthjustice, Blueland, and DeliverZero — issued a memo of support stating “This bill would save tax dollars and position New York as a global leader in reducing plastic pollution.”
Plastics and Climate
Plastic production is already out of control and is expected to double in the next 20 years. As more of our energy comes from renewable sources, fossil fuel companies like Shell and Exxon are seeking to recoup falling profits by increasing plastics production and canceling out greenhouse gas reductions. In fact, half of all plastic in Earth’s history was produced in the last 20 years — the plastic we’re seeing now in our air, water, food, and bodies didn’t even exist before 2000.
Plastic is made from fossil fuels and toxic chemicals. Most plastics are made out of ethane, a byproduct of fracking. In 2020, plastic’s climate impacts amounted to the equivalent of nearly 49 million cars on the road, according to a conservative estimate by Material Research L3C. And that’s not including the carbon footprint associated with disposing of plastic.
Plastics and Health
Only about 6% of plastic in the United States actually gets recycled, and only 9% of all the plastic waste ever generated, globally, has been recycled! The rest ends up burned at incinerators, buried in landfills, or polluting rivers and the ocean — an estimated 33 billion pounds of plastic enter the ocean every year.
Plastic is being measured everywhere, and microplastics are entering our soil, food, water, and air. Scientists estimate people consume, on average, hundreds of thousands of microplastics per year, and these particles have been found in human placenta, breast milk, stool, blood, and lungs. Scientists are still researching how exactly this is affecting our health, but chemicals found in plastics have been associated with cancer, nervous system damage, hormone disruption and fertility issues.
In fact, new research continues to find that the microplastics problem is worse than previously thought: New research in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that microplastics are linked to increased heart attacks and strokes, in addition to the many previously known negative impacts of single-use plastics to everyday New Yorkers’ health. Another new study from Columbia University found that bottled water can contain hundreds of thousands of plastic fragments.
Why Chemical Recycling Isn’t a Solution
Because plastics recycling is a failure, the plastics and petrochemical industries are now arming themselves with a pseudosolution: chemical recycling, or “advanced recycling.” This is a polluting process that uses high heat or chemicals to turn plastic waste into fossil fuels or feedstocks to produce new plastic products. It’s a dangerous distraction that’s allowing companies to exponentially increase the amount of plastic — and greenhouse gasses — they put into the world. Learn more from Beyond Plastics’s recent report, “Chemical Recycling: A Dangerous Deception.”
