National Sierra Club Head Ben Jealous Urges New York Assembly Leadership to Pass Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act
Sierra Club and Former NAACP Executive Director Pushes Back Against Industry Misinformation and Urges New York State Assembly to Pass Critical Environmental Justice Legislation
And ICYMI Over the Weekend: New York Daily News and Albany Times-Union Columnist Editorialized in Favor of the Legislation
For Immediate Release: June 9, 2025
Contact: Marissa Solomon, marissa@pythiapublic.com, (734) 330-0807
ALBANY, N.Y. — This morning, the national Sierra Club executive director and former NAACP executive director Ben Jealous sent a letter to New York State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Assembly Member Michaelle Solages, chair of the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus, urging them to pass the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (A1749 Glick).
Jealous writes, “New Yorkers — especially those in disadvantaged communities — should not have to sacrifice their health and safety for the sake of corporate convenience. As legislators entrusted with protecting your constituents, we urge you to listen not to industry lobbyists, but to the science, to frontline residents, and to the overwhelming majority of voters who want decisive action to reduce plastic pollution.”
Read the letter here and below.
Yesterday, an editorial in favor of the legislation ran in the New York Daily News and Albany Times-Union columnist Fred LeBrun published an op-ed supporting the bill.
According to the Daily News editorial, titled “Reduce Wrapping, Reduce Waste: Speaker Carl Heastie and the Assembly Must Approve Plastics Bill:”
“One of the arguments against the legislation is that it would be the end of individually plastic-wrapped slices of American cheese. Whether the orangey squares are labeled ‘pasteurized prepared cheese product’ or ‘pasteurized process cheese product,’ they can use a thin sheet of paper to separate the singles, and unlike a plastic wrapper, that paper can be thrown in the brown organic collection bin.
“The consumer doesn’t suffer while the Sanitation Department sees reduced costs and is spared tons of waste being trucked to distant landfills.”
And according to Albany Times-Union columnist Fred LeBrun in his column, titled “The World is Choking on Plastic”:
“For all of its positives that help shape modern life, there’s also the unwanted, unasked-for gargantuan amounts of plastic packaging waste those profiting from it inflict on us — 30% of the state’s waste stream.
“It’s glutting our landfills and poisoning our oceans, and you and I are paying to get rid of it. Not the companies making the plastics or the manufacturers imposing them on consumers. They get a free ride and high profits. We get the ever-increasing bill for managing waste that shouldn’t even exist.”
Letter
June 9, 2025
The Honorable Carl E. Heastie
Speaker of the New York State Assembly
Legislative Office Building, Room 932
Albany, NY 12248
The Honorable Michaelle C. Solages
Assembly Deputy Majority Leader
Chair of the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus Legislative Office Building, Room 452
Albany, NY 12248
Re: Support the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (A.1749/S.1464)
Dear Speaker Heastie and Chairwoman Solages,
On behalf of the Sierra Club and our more than 40,000 members across New York, I urge you to pass the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (A.1749/S.1464) this legislative session. This common-sense, justice-forward legislation would reduce pollution, curb New York’s contribution to climate change, protect public health, and shift the financial burden of packaging waste off of taxpayers and onto the corporations responsible for creating it.
A Moral Imperative in the Fight Against Climate Change
Passing the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act is both fiscally responsible and morally imperative. The bill represents one of New York’s most powerful tools to fight the climate crisis.
The link between plastics and climate change is undeniable. Plastic production now generates more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire aviation industry. If plastic were a country, it would be the fifth-largest emitter of climate-warming gases in the world. These emissions begin during fossil fuel extraction and refining, continue during energy-intensive production and transport, and persist for decades or centuries after disposal — especially when plastic is burned in incinerators or degrades in landfills as it does here in New York, resulting in the release of methane and other greenhouse gases.
There is no way to meaningfully address the climate crisis without reducing plastic production and use. And there’s no better place to start than with single-use packaging — especially the plastic we use for seconds but that pollutes our communities, oceans, and atmosphere for centuries. The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act does exactly that, while also setting meaningful requirements that spur a societal shift to reuse and refill systems.
Don’t Fall for Industry Misinformation
Despite what the petrochemical and plastics industries may claim, research and data show this bill will not make consumer goods less affordable for New Yorkers. Multiple independent studies — including research commissioned by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and a policy brief from Columbia University — have found no indication that extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws like this one lead to increased costs for consumers. Grocery prices are essentially the same in Canadian provinces with and without EPR, and no correlation has been found between EPR fees and higher product prices. Consumer Reports reviewed the available data and concluded that "there is no evidence that consumer prices go up as a result of an EPR policy.”
The truth is that taxpayers and consumers are already shouldering the costs — through local taxes, private waste hauling bills, and the economic toll of pollution and climate change. A report published last month found that New Yorkers would actually save $1.3 billion over the first 10 years of the New York packaging-reduction bill’s passage. It’s time for the companies generating this waste to finally take responsibility.
A Justice-Forward Bill
Finally, it is crucial to emphasize that this legislation is also a matter of environmental justice. As environmental justice leaders outlined in a March 2025 letter to Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Heastie, the burden of plastic pollution falls hardest on low-income communities and communities of color — from waste incinerators in Peekskill to landfills in the Finger Lakes. In places like the South Bronx, thousands of diesel trucks transport waste each day through residential neighborhoods, contributing to air pollution in the area. Air pollution is linked to elevated asthma rates, cancer risks, and diminished quality of life. The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act would significantly reduce the volume of packaging waste being hauled into and burned in these overburdened areas.
It would also ban 17 of the most toxic chemicals and materials currently used in packaging, including PFAS, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), lead, and formaldehyde — chemicals that endanger workers, contaminate drinking water, and harm public health. And it would close the door on industry-backed “chemical recycling,” a misleading term for a toxic and polluting process that overwhelmingly impacts fenceline communities.
New Yorkers — especially those in disadvantaged communities — should not have to sacrifice their health and safety for the sake of corporate convenience. As legislators entrusted with protecting your constituents, we urge you to listen not to industry lobbyists, but to the science, to frontline residents, and to the overwhelming majority of voters who want decisive action to reduce plastic pollution.
The Sierra Club proudly supports the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act, and we respectfully ask that you do the same. Thank you for your leadership on behalf of New York families and communities.
Sincerely,
Ben Jealous
Executive Director
cc: Members of the NY Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus
BACKGROUND
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 and materials, including all PFAS chemicals, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), 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.
A new 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.
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 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.”
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 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 Beyond Plastics
Launched in 2019, Beyond Plastics pairs the wisdom and experience of environmental policy experts with the energy and creativity of grassroots advocates to build a vibrant and effective movement to end plastic pollution. Using deep policy and advocacy expertise, Beyond Plastics is building a well-informed, effective movement seeking to achieve the institutional, economic, and societal changes needed to save our planet and ourselves, from the negative health, climate, and environmental impacts for the production, usage, and disposal of plastics.
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