New York City Leaders Unite For Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act
NYC Comptroller Brad Lander, DSNY Commissioner Jessica Tisch, NYC Council Sanitation Chair Shaun Abreu, the Mayor’s Office for Climate and Environmental Justice, and more Environmental Leaders Call On Speaker Heastie and Leader Stewart-Cousins to Bring Popular Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act to a Floor Vote
New Polling Shows the Public Overwhelmingly Supports Reducing Single-Use Plastic
For Immediate Release: May 9, 2024
Contact: Marissa Solomon, marissa@pythiapublic.com, 734-330-0807
NEW YORK — This morning, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and New York City Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch, with Beyond Plastics president Judith Enck and NRDC’s Eric Goldstein, held a press conference outside a Sanitation Department waste transfer station urging the New York state legislature to pass the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (A5322B Glick / S4246B Harckham).
New York City has a growing solid waste crisis, with taxpayers being asked to spend nearly half a billion dollars this year just to deal with waste, 30% of which is single-use products. As corporate plastic polluters rapidly expand plastic production, those numbers will only grow, and taxpayers will be on the hook for even more, while the environmental justice communities around landfills and incinerators continue to suffer.
The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act will reduce plastic packaging, save tax dollars, provide new revenue for localities to manage waste, and bring enormous benefits — especially to environmental justice communities. With the legislation, New York City alone would receive at least $150 million to support waste reduction infrastructure, recycling, and waste disposal costs.
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.
New polling from NRDC proves that the public overwhelmingly wants legislation to reduce single-use plastic too, with a whopping 88% of respondents supporting reducing plastic production by eliminating unnecessary and avoidable plastic. Ninety-four percent of Americans support eliminating toxic chemicals in plastic to protect people’s health, and 94% of Americans support taking action to prevent microplastics from entering our drinking water and food supply. Eighty-eight percent support reducing plastic production by eliminating unnecessary and avoidable plastic.
“Supporting PRRIA is crucial in our efforts to combat plastic waste’s detrimental impact on the environment,” said New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. “This legislation will reduce plastic packaging, shift the financial burden from consumers to companies for managing their own packaging waste, and hold companies accountable for proper disposal. As a city council member, I was proud to lead the fight to ban plastic bags in our city, and PRRIA will take that effort even further by preventing more plastic pollution. In essence, PRRIA aims to reduce plastic waste, promote responsible packaging practices, and protect our environment.”
"DSNY has been in the recycling business since 1989, and we are in it for the long haul. But the City and its 8.5 million residents are just one part of the circular economy,” said Jessica Tisch, Commissioner, NYC Department of Sanitation. “EPR bills are a win-win for the City and for the planet, and we call on leaders in Albany to pass this law; either polluters pollute less, or they pay more, and either way, less plastic ends up in landfills.”
“Our environmental justice communities have long been disproportionately affected by plastic waste,” said Mayor’s Office of Climate & Environmental Justice Executive Director Elijah Hutchinson. “In order to address these environmental inequities, we must go after the producers who contribute to the plastics crisis and not place the burden on individuals. This legislation does just that while also helping us meet our climate goals and improve the health of all New Yorkers.”
“Producers of single-use plastic packaging have gotten a remarkable deal. Every year, New Yorkers spend $160 million to collect and recycle plastic material that they did not create — effectively subsidizing companies as their products end up in landfills or as litter on our streets. Enough is enough: we are done footing the bill for the corporations that got us into this environmental and economic disaster,” said Council Member Shaun Abreu, Chair of the Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management. “I was proud to receive the support of Beyond Plastics on our legislation requiring stadiums to accept and promote reusables this past year, and I stand shoulder to shoulder with them — and partners across our state — in support of the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act. This legislation is a meaningful step toward phasing out single-use plastics, incentivizing an environmentally-sound supply chain, and building a global model of Extended Producer Responsibility. Let’s get this done.”
“Last month, the Council passed Resolution 172-A, in support of the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act, which would establish an extended producer responsibility system for packaging. NYC is overflowing with packaging, plastics, and paper waste that is adding stress to our aging and inequitable waste infrastructure, and creating barriers on our pathway to Zero Waste," said Council Member Sandy Nurse, the resolution’s prime sponsor. “This legislation can help fund Zero Waste efforts by providing an estimated $150 million in revenue for NYC to offset the cost of our massive waste and recycling operations. We are calling on the New York State Legislature to pass this law to create and fund a more sustainable waste management system."
“New York City taxpayers will pay nearly half a billion in just one year to get rid of unnecessary, wasteful single-use plastics. Without action by state lawmakers, this cost will only grow, because as renewable energy and electric vehicles become more prevalent, fossil fuel companies are rapidly increasing plastic production — and plastic pollution — to pad their bottom lines. We can’t keep letting taxpayers foot the bill for plastic pollution, especially with the negative climate and health impacts that come with it – for New Yorkers and our neighbors that get stuck with the trash we ship out of the City. It’s urgent: Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins must bring the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act to the floor for a vote,” said Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics and former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator.
“The ever-growing amount of fossil-fuel based throw-away plastics and other packaging waste contributes to the climate crisis, endangers public health, and costs New York City taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year in disposal costs. But a recent NRDC public opinion poll shows that 9 of of 10 respondents favored reducing avoidable plastic, eliminating toxic chemicals in plastic, and encouraging alternatives to single-use plastic products. Fortunately, that’s exactly what the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act, introduced by Assemblymember Deborah Glick and Senator Peter Harckham would do; it’s legislation that will benefit New York City residents in all five broughs,” said Eric A. Goldstein, NYC Environment Director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The legislation 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.
BACKGROUND
About the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act
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.
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.”
