New York faces a growing plastic pollution crisis. We produce 6.8 million tons of packaging waste each year. Most of this packaging is sent to landfills, incinerated, or littered in our streets, parks, beaches, rivers, and ultimately, the Atlantic Ocean. According to the EPA, plastics constitute approximately 12.2% of the municipal solid waste stream. For Yonkers alone, that adds up to 11,000 tons of plastic waste per year, which is trucked to Peekskill’s incinerator, where it is turned into toxic ash and air emissions.
NY legislators are in the final stretch of passing a critical bill to REDUCE the amount of plastic made and used, and save money for NY in the process. The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (S1464/A1749) would require big companies selling products in NY to cut plastic packaging by 30% over the next 12 years. The bill, introduced by Senator Harckham and Assemblymember Glick, would also ban 14 highly toxic chemicals, including cancer-causing PFAS that are used in packaging.
The ground-breaking bill would require companies to gradually cut their plastic packaging and redesign what’s left to make it reusable, refillable, or truly recyclable. When packaging is discarded, New York’s taxpayers and municipalities cover the cost to collect, sort, and manage it. This bill shifts the burden to the companies creating the waste and will provide critical funding for municipal waste reduction and recycling infrastructure. It’s past time for this bill to become law.
Per renowned activist Judith Enck, “We can’t recycle our way out of this problem!” We must reduce this toxic waste that harms our health and speeds climate change. Please call our state senator, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, at 914-423-4031, and Assembly Member Nader Sayegh at 914-779-8805, and urge them to pass The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act. (Leaving a voicemail is just fine!)
