Dozens of Amendments Made to Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act

ALBANY, NY (04/27/2026) (readMedia)-- Today, following months of work, lead sponsors Senator Pete Harckham and Assemblymember Deborah Glick introduced dozens of amendments to the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (PRRIA - A1749 Glick/S1464 Harckham). The amendments include major concessions to the 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.

"New Yorkers didn't vote for more plastic, and we are currently paying hundreds of millions to landfill and burn plastic waste. These new amendments are major concessions, and now it is imperative that the bill be brought up for a vote in the state Assembly," said Judith Enck, former EPA regional administrator, president of Beyond Plastics, and co-author of the new book "The Problem with Plastic."

The bill has passed in the NYS Senate for the past two years. It sailed through four Assembly committees last year and is currently on the Assembly floor, Calendar No. 68. Last week, the Assembly passed the Food Safety and Chemical Disclosure Act (S1239E/A1556G) by a vote of 106 to 32 to ban three harmful food additives linked to cancer and hormone disruption. The logical next step to protect New Yorkers' health is to pass PRRIA and protect New Yorkers from the harmful chemicals in plastic and microplastics, also linked to cancer and hormone disruption.

The new amendments to the bill include:

• Removes five chemicals from the list of 17 chemicals and substances to be banned. Removed from the list include: halogenated flame retardants, perchlorate, UV 328, polycarbonate, and tetramethyl bisphenol F (TMBPF). Some of the most toxic chemicals used in packaging - including all PFAS, lead, mercury, cadmium, and most bisphenol chemicals - remain in the bill. Note that there are 16,000 chemicals found in plastics.
• Entirely eliminates the Toxic Packaging Task Force and removes the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation's ability to add chemicals to be banned in the future.
• Reduces various penalties, including if companies violate the toxics provisions, the penalty is reduced from $100,000 per violation to $10,000 per violation.
• Longer timelines to comply with the toxics requirements.
• Entirely eliminates the new inspector general position that would have ensured fair compliance with the law. Instead, the DEC will enforce the law.
• Clarifies that companies are still eligible for tax credits or business incentives.
• Extends the plastics packaging and recycling rate standards timeline.
• Extends the reusable or refillable packaging standards timeline.
• Extends the length of waivers from one year to five years.

BACKGROUND

Adoption of the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (S1464A Harckham/A1749A Glick) will still 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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