Buffalo Common Council Urges State Lawmakers to Cut Plastic Pollution

BUFFALO, NY (04/28/2026) (readMedia)-- Today, the Buffalo Common Council unanimously passed a resolution (attached) urging the New York state legislature to pass the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (S1464A Harckham/A1749A Glick). By reducing single-use packaging by 30% and bringing in new revenue for municipalities, the legislation will benefit Buffalo taxpayers by more than $800,000 every year, according to an analysis from Beyond Plastics.

"The Great Lakes have been mired by microplastic, Buffalonians pay too much for the removal of much plastic waste from our communities, and more and more studies show that toxins from plastic and microplastics are making us sick. But with PRRIA, these problems are one step closer to being solved. Thank you to the City of Buffalo Common Council for their support of PRRIA. Now, the New York state legislature must pass the bill this year," said Lucas Santos, Beyond Plastics Buffalo.

"Single-use packaging is harming the Great Lakes, and we – the taxpayers – have to pay rising landfill fees and waste management. With a budget crisis looming in the city of Buffalo, and user fees and taxes expected to increase, I applaud the Council's decision to take proactive action to support PRRIA and reduce the burden on taxpayers. Now, we need the state legislature to follow suit," said Thea Hassan, Beyond Plastics Buffalo.

The bill has passed in the New York state Senate for the past two years. It sailed through four Assembly committees last year and is currently on the Assembly floor, Calendar No. 68. On April 27th, lead sponsors Senator Pete Harckham and Assemblymember Deborah Glick introduced dozens of amendments to PRRIA. The amendments include major concessions to plastics and petrochemical industries, such as decreasing the number of toxic chemicals that the legislation would ban from single-use packaging, providing much more time to meet deadlines, and eliminating the establishment of a new inspector general to help enforce the law.

BACKGROUND

Adoption of the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (S1464A Harckham/A1749A Glick) will transform 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 single-use packaging by 30% incrementally over 12 years;
• Require most packaging - including plastic, cardboard, paper, and metal - to meet recycling rates;
• Prohibit the harmful process known as chemical recycling to count toward achieving these recycling rates;
• Prohibit the worst toxic chemicals to be used in packaging, including all PFAS chemicals, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), lead, and mercury; and
• Establish a modest fee on packaging paid by big companies, with new revenue going to local taxpayers.

A report from Beyond Plastics, "Projected Economic Benefits of the New York Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act," shows how New Yorkers would save $1.3 billion in just one decade after the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act becomes law. These savings would come from the avoided costs of waste management when there's less waste to manage, and they don't even include the funds that would be brought in after placing a fee on packaging paid by product producers. A new analysis from Beyond Plastics builds on this report, and finds that nine selected communities across New York state could benefit by more than $411 million each year after adopting the legislation from annual waste reduction savings, as well as an estimate of the revenue local governments will make when plastic polluters pay.

Because this bill will save New Yorkers money and protect their health, a bipartisan 73% of New York voters are in favor of the bill. Because the legislation would save tax dollars and protect our health, over 30 localities across the state have passed resolutions urging Albany leaders to pass it. More than 300 organizations and businesses - including Beyond Plastics, Hip Hop Caucus, Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, League of Women Voters, 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."

Despite so much support, this fight is David versus Goliath. Last year, there were a whopping 106 registered businesses and organizations working against the bill - megacorporations like ExxonMobil, Shell, McDonald's, Amazon, and Coca-Cola. Compare that to the 23 lobbyists working in favor of the bill - mostly nonprofit groups like Beyond Plastics, NYPIRG, NRDC and The League of Women Voters. Read more about the lobbying around PRRIA here.

Why Chemical Recycling Isn't a Solution

Because plastics recycling is a failure, the plastics and petrochemical industries are now pushing a pseudo-solution: 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 gases - they put into the world. Learn more from Beyond Plastics's report, "Chemical Recycling: A Dangerous Deception." These New York bills do not ban chemical recycling but simply do not allow chemical recycling to count as real recycling.

Plastics and Climate

Plastic production is warming the planet four times faster than air travel, and it's only going to get worse with plastic production expected to double in the next 20 years. Plastic products are made from fossil fuels and may contain as many as 16,000 chemicals, many of them known to be harmful to humans and even more untested for their safety. 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

Less than 6% of plastic in the United States actually gets 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 contains as many as 16,000 chemicals - many of them toxic. Over the past two decades, many retailers and manufacturers have already begun to voluntarily phase out some of these toxic chemicals like BPA (demonstrating that removing chemicals can be done!), but PFAS, PVC, mercury, and more are still in plastic, making their way into our bodies.

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 microplastic particles per year, and these particles have been found in human placenta, breast milk, stool, blood, lungs, and more.

Scientific research continues to find that the microplastics problem is worse than previously thought: Research in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that microplastics are linked to increased heart attacks, strokes and premature deaths. Another study from Columbia University found that bottled water can contain hundreds of thousands of plastic fragments.

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