NYC Leaders Call for State Legislators to Pass the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act

NEW YORK, NY (05/15/2026) (readMedia)-- Today, New York City Sanitation Commissioner Gregory Anderson held a news conference with New York City Council Sanitation Chair Justin Sanchez, New York State Senators Brian Kavanagh and Erik Bottcher, New York State Assemblymember Grace Lee, and advocates with the NAACP New York State Conference, Beyond Plastics, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The group gathered at Pier 17 at the South Street Seaport, along the East River where barges haul away city trash, and urged the New York state legislature to pass the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (PRRIA - S1464A Harckham/A1749A Glick), which would save New York City taxpayers $380 million every year.

Watch video from the news conference.

"Residents of New York City didn't vote for their groceries to be wrapped in layers of unnecessary, wasteful, and harmful plastic, but they still have to spend half a billion in tax dollars every year to export the city's waste to the Finger Lakes and out of state. What a waste! Today, we call on Albany lawmakers to bring this pioneering bill to a vote to save money, keep plastic pollution out of our streets, rivers, and our bodies, and make big businesses pay rather than taxpayers," said Judith Enck, former EPA regional administrator, president of Beyond Plastics, and co-author of the new book "The Problem with Plastic."

Since the closure of the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island in 2001, city taxpayers have spent billions of dollars exporting waste outside the city. Now, New York City taxpayers spend approximately half a billion dollars per year hauling New York City waste to landfills and trash incinerators in other communities. 30% of the city's waste is single-use packaging, much of which is unnecessary and wasteful.

As plastic production grows and large companies use more and more unnecessary packaging, everyday people are the ones who have to pay to get rid of it. But by reducing the amount of waste and requiring large companies - rather than taxpayers - to be financially responsible for waste disposal, this one bill will save New York City taxpayers $380 million every year. These major savings are why the New York City Council and 15 community boards across the city have passed resolutions in support of the legislation.

Despite the undeniable benefits to taxpayers and communities, chemical and plastic lobbyists claim that prices will go up. But there is no credible evidence to support their scare tactics. According to Consumer Reports, "It is important to note that there is no evidence that consumer prices go up as a result of an extended producer responsibility (EPR) policy. A study funded by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality analyzed actual prices of products on shelves before and after EPR legislation was passed in Canada and found that they did not increase. In Europe, which has had packaging EPR programs in operation for over 35 years, prices have also remained stable." Packaging is typically only 2% of the total cost of a product, and in fact, it's plastic itself that's expensive - plastic is made out of fossil fuels, and oil prices are rising right now due to the Iran war.

"Single-use plastic is the party guest that refuses to take the hint," said Council Member Justin E. Sanchez, who Chair's Council's Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management, "It stays in our streets, rivers, and communities for decades, and the longer it lingers, the more damage it does to New Yorkers. Albany has an opportunity to save taxpayers money, reduce waste, and improve community health by passing the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act. It's time to make corporations clean up the mess and take responsibility for the waste they create."

Read Council Member Sanchez's op-ed in favor of the legislation in today's New York Daily News.

"During my time as an Assembly Member, I co-sponsored the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act which if passed will massively decrease excessive packaging and also makes polluters pay. "said Council Member Harvey Epstein. "Reducing single-use plastics and wasteful packaging is critical to mitigating the climate crisis"

"The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act is a necessary piece of legislation that will result in less waste generated in New York and less waste landfilled or burned in communities of color, where it pollutes air, water, and soil and negatively impacts the health of residents and their children. We must deal with the production and use of products that cause lasting harm on our health and to our environment. New Yorkers are depending on legislators to pass this bill this year." said Chris Alexander, Executive Director of the NAACP New York State Conference.

"Scientists are finding tiny microplastic particles, which shed from everyday products, accumulating in the environment and the human body and presenting a risk to our health. Meanwhile, New Yorkers are paying hundreds of millions of dollars every year to dump or burn plastic trash and other packaging in problematic landfills and incinerators," said Eric A. Goldstein, NYC Environment Director at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). "The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act, spearheaded by Senator Harckham and Assemblymember Glick, would tackle both problems - reducing excessive plastic packaging of food and other consumer goods, while slashing the amount city taxpayers have to spend on hauling away excessive packaging waste."

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 taxpayers, 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, mercury, and formaldehyde; 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. More than 300 organizations and businesses - including Beyond Plastics, Hip Hop Caucus, Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, League of Women Voters, Environmental Advocates, NYPIRG, Earthjustice, and others - 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 organizations 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.

###