Letter from Marty Van Lenten Becker

Packaging Bill Is Important

I was stunned recently when I read that an average of 6.8 million tons of packaging waste is produced annually in New York. Most of this packaging is sent to landfills, burned in incinerators, or winds up polluting our streets and parks and beaches, with much of it getting into rivers and then the Atlantic Ocean.

As the fourth largest state in the country, New York can make an enormous impact by enacting the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act, legislation that would require big companies selling products in New York to cut plastic packaging by 50 percent over the next 12 years. The bill makes companies that create packaging waste responsible for the cost of managing the waste that they create, rather than taxpayers. Local governments and private haulers would still manage New York’s packaging waste, but packaging producers would help foot the bill. This would motivate companies to reduce the amount of waste created.

This bill, introduced by Senator Pete Harckham and Assemblymember Deborah Glick, would also address plastic’s human health impacts by phasing out toxic chemicals currently used to package the food and drinks we consume—PFAS, lead, mercury, bisphenols, formaldehyde, vinyl chloride, and other chemicals. And it would not allow the plastic industry’s latest false solution, called chemical recycling, to count as real recycling because it isn’t.

Please take the time to contact Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie at (518) 455-3791 or speaker@nyassembly.gov and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins at (518) 455-2585 or scousins@nysenate.gov and urge them to bring this bill to the floor for a vote.

Marty Van Lenten Becker
Oneonta