Advocates Rally With Environmental Leaders and Lawmakers to Put People Over Plastics
Group Will Build on Growing Momentum for Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act and Bigger Better Bottle Bill
Photo-Ops Include Giant Inflatable Bottle and Plastic Tidal Wave
For Immediate Release: May 7, 2025
Contact: Marissa Solomon, marissa@pythiapublic.com, 734-330-0807
ALBANY, N.Y. — Over 225 advocates, environmental leaders, lawmakers, and a marching band gathered outside the state Capitol today to urge Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins to pass the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (S1464 Harckham/A1749 Glick) and the Bigger Better Bottle Bill (S5684 May/A6543 Glick). Speakers discussed the negative impacts of polluting trash incinerators and overflowing landfills near their homes, and shared how legislation to reduce waste will save money.
Watch the news conference here.
At the news conference, the group released a letter in favor of the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act signed by 30 leading environmental justice groups, including NAACP New York, Hispanic Federation, and Hip Hop Caucus. They also released a memo of support from over 300 civic groups and businesses.
The group built on growing momentum after the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act passed through the New York State Assembly Codes Committee yesterday and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie indicated the bill will come to a floor vote this session. Last month, a new Siena poll showed that New York residents overwhelmingly support state policies to reduce single-use plastic packaging in New York. Seventy-three percent think big companies should be required to reduce packaging on their products, as proposed in the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act. And 61% want the beverage container deposit increased from 5 to 10 cents, as proposed in the Bigger Better Bottle Bill.
View the letter from environmental justice groups.
View the memo of support signed by over 300 civic groups and businesses.
“It’s time to pass PRRIA this session and take meaningful action to address our waste crisis and remove toxins from our environment. The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (PRRIA) will save municipalities and taxpayers $1.3 billion in its first decade,” said Senator Harckham, chair of the Senate Environmental Conservation Committee. “For 70 years, New Yorkers have borne the financial, environmental, and public health costs of plastic packaging waste disposal. The status quo is no longer sustainable. Thank you to Beyond Plastics for your unwavering support and tireless advocacy for this critical bill.”
"NY must tackle its mounting trash tsunami. Landfills are reaching capacity, and owners are asking for more land. We can take sensible steps to slow the flow of waste, eliminate packaging toxins, and encourage more recycling. These two bills – the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act and my Bigger Better Bottle Bill – are the best way to start this critical work," said Senator Rachel May (D-Onondaga, Cayuga).
“We are drowning in excess packaging and waste and the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act and the Bigger Better Bottle Bill are important legislative solutions to provide the relief that New Yorkers need. Incentivizing sustainable packaging, shifting the financial burden of waste hauling away from New Yorkers and municipalities, and getting more deposit containers recycled are just some of the important steps forward that these bills would provide. New York needs these bills passed this session to help ensure a healthier environment and more sustainable disposal solutions,” said Assemblymember Glick, chair of the Assembly Environmental Conservation Committee.
"As a strong advocate for environmental responsibility and economic sustainability, I’m proud to support both the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act and the Bigger Better Bottle Bill,” said state Senator Lea Webb. “These bold pieces of legislation work hand in hand to hold producers accountable, reduce waste at its source, and invest in the infrastructure we need to build a cleaner, greener future for New York. The Packaging Reduction Act ensures companies take real responsibility for the packaging they produce, while the Bigger Better Bottle Bill modernizes our outdated deposit system to include more containers and increase redemption rates. It’s time we shift the burden away from consumers and local governments and create a recycling system that actually works — for our communities and for our environment."
“Nobody voted for more plastic. But New Yorkers are stuck spending hundreds of millions every year to bury and burn waste at polluting landfills and incinerators, in communities that already bear the brunt of environmental injustice. Meanwhile, New Yorkers could save a whopping $1.3 billion in just one decade with the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act. We are calling on lawmakers to pass the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act this year, and put plastic polluters — not New Yorkers — on the hook to pay for these costs,” said Judith Enck, Beyond Plastics president and former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator.
Blair Horner, senior policy advisor at NYPIRG, said, “New York’s original bottle bill was a tremendous success 40 years ago, but it’s time for a 2025 update. We can fill up our polluting landfills and open new ones, or we can modernize the Bottle Bill and save New Yorkers more than $100 million every year. It’s obvious: The legislature must pass the Bigger Better Bottle Bill this session.”
“Plastic doesn’t disappear—it just gets shipped, dumped, or burned in someone backyard. For too long, polluters have passed the buck and the bill to the rest of us. The Packaging Reduction Act is how we stop paying for their mess—and start building a system that’s cleaner, fairer, and actually works,” said Vanessa Fajans-Turner, executive director, Environmental Advocates NY
“As we demand the full closure of the Brookhaven Landfill we must have the same energy to demand a waste free society. The Packaging Reduction Recycling Infrastructure Act will reduce our waste. The reduction of waste is the way to responsibly close the landfills that are at capacity and the incinerators that are decades old, outdated and toxic. It is our job to demand PRRIA get passed. It is the duty of our elected officials to vote for PRRIA and get it passed this session,” said Monique Fitzgerald, co-founder, Brookhaven Landfill Action and Remediation Group and climate justice organizer, Long Island Progressive Coalition
“New York is drowning in waste, and legislators seem to be turning a blind eye. Now is not the time to prevaricate or kick the can down the road—we need bold action! Together, PRRIA and the Bigger Better Bottle Bill create a world-class system to comprehensively address the overwhelming problem of packaging pollution. They will benefit the environment, our communities, regular New Yorkers, small businesses, and the state itself. No one stands to lose except polluters. New York State elected officials should remember who they serve, and act today to save us from being buried in plastic!" said Ryan Castalia, Sure We Can
“Every day, Disadvantaged Communities like mine are forced to live in the shadow of corporate greed and mountains of trash. Seneca Meadows is a symbol of everything broken in our waste system – poisoning New York's air, water, and our future", said Yvonne Taylor, vice president, Seneca Lake Guardian. " We need bold legislative action, not more landfilling. The Packaging Reduction Act is our chance to put people over plastics and build a cleaner, more just New York.”
“Plastics are a public health crisis. Our blood, brains, hearts, testicles, lungs, livers, placentas, and breastmilk are all filling up with toxic, immortal molecules of plastic with terrifying consequences for our health. We can’t recycle our way out of this crisis, and burning or landfilling plastics creates additional health harms for the environmental justice communities where they are dumped. Reducing their use—starting with packaging—is the only meaningful solution to the problem of plastic pollution,” said Sandra Steingraber, PhD, co-founder Concerned Health Professionals of New York
To view Beyond Plastics' April 2025 report showing New Yorkers' projected savings if the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act is passed, visit beyondplastics.org/publications/prria
ABOUT THE PACKAGING REDUCTION AND RECYCLING INFRASTRUCTURE ACT
The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (S1464 Harckham/A1749 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 plastic packaging by 30% incrementally over 12 years;
By 2052, all packaging — including plastic, glass, cardboard, paper, and metal — must meet a recycling rate of 75% (with incremental benchmarks until then);
Prohibit 17 of packaging’s worst toxic chemicals, including all PFAS chemicals, vinyl chloride, lead, and mercury;
Prohibit the harmful process known as chemical recycling to be considered real recycling;
Establish a modest fee on packaging paid by product producers, with new revenue going to local taxpayers; and
Establish a new Office of Inspector General to ensure that companies fully comply with the new law.
Because the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act would save tax dollars, over 30 localities across the state have passed resolutions urging Albany leaders to pass the bill. The New York City Council passed a resolution in support, and the Mayor’s Office released a memorandum of support in favor of the legislation. More than 240 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.”
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 is made from fossil fuels and contains 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, and only 9% of all the plastic waste ever generated, globally, has been 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 is being measured everywhere, and microplastics are entering our soil, food, water, and air. Scientists estimate people consume, on average, hundreds of thousands of microplastics 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: New research in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that microplastics are linked to increased heart attacks, strokes and premature deaths. Another new study from Columbia University found that bottled water can contain hundreds of thousands of plastic fragments.
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.
ABOUT THE BIGGER BETTER BOTTLE BILL
According to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the state’s landfills are likely to close no no later than 25 years from now and as early as 16 years. In an effort to divert waste from closing landfills, the DEC recommended that the state strengthen the Bottle Bill among its policy recommendations. An increase of the deposit from 5 cents to 10 cents would result in a huge increase of redemption rates, as has been shown in other states. And according to a new analysis from NYPIRG, the Bigger Better Bottle Bill would bring in $100 million for the state’s environmental efforts in year one alone.
The Bigger Better Bottle Bill (TBD May/TBD Glick) would:
Expand the beverage containers covered under the law to include containers for sports drinks, non-carbonated drinks, wine, and spirits;
Raise the deposit fee to a dime (it has been a nickel since 1983);
Raise the handling fee for those who handle redeemed beverage containers (it has been stagnant at 3.5 cents since 2009, leading to at least 50 redemption centers closing because of this “freeze” on handling fees while other costs increased);
Reduce single-use beverage containers; and
Implement a grant program to help redemption centers and small businesses increase the use of technologies to make it easier for the public to redeem covered beverage containers.
The organization Reloop has estimated that modernizing the Bottle Bill would divert 5.4 billion containers from the waste stream each year. If approved, this would save New York local governments over $70 million resulting from lower solid waste disposal costs. The state could see up to $200 million in additional revenues.
The Bigger Better Bottle Bill would support environmental justice communities by diverting waste and litter from these communities that already disproportionately experience the negative impacts of pollution. It would also support people who can’t access traditional employment. Canners are essential workers, yet today in New York City they earn around $5 per hour on average, or less than a third of the minimum wage, according to a 2023 study performed by Sure We Can. There are an estimated 10,000 New York City residents that collect deposit containers for their income; container collection supports people who can’t access traditional employment.
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