23 Westchester Elected Officials Urge Senator Stewart-Cousins to Reduce Plastic Packaging by 50%

This morning, 23 elected officials from Westchester and 23 Westchester organizations sent letters to Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins. In two separate letters, they urged the Majority Leader to pass the strongest Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act possible and reduce single-use plastic packaging by 50%.  Further, it is important that the final bill not include loopholes that would allow big companies not to comply with the law.

The elected officials — including the mayors of Scarsdale, New Rochelle, White Plains, Hastings-on-Hudson, among others — write, “Most of Westchester County’s waste is sent to the Peekskill incinerator, at great taxpayer expense and at the expense of the health of Westchester residents. While we appreciate the provision of the bill that puts new fees on single-use packaging, the most significant taxpayer savings will come from the 50% reduction requirement. This will mean less packaging to pick up in diesel trucks and less packaging that will be charged a tipping fee at the Peekskill incinerator. We have all heard the refrain ‘reduce, reuse, recycle.’ This bill will require reuse and refill, which is much more important than recycling since most plastics are not designed to be recycled.”

Read the letter from elected officials here, and below.

The organizations — including Peekskill NAACP, League of Women Voters Rivertowns, Westchester Alliance for Sustainable Solutions, Hudson River Sloop Clearwater  and several Mothers Out Front chapters and various Westchester Indivisible groups, — write, “We recognize that you are hearing from various opponents, but there is massive public support for Senate bill 4246-B. Polling released on May 22, 2024, by Siena, found that 82% of New York voters say single-use plastic packaging is a problem and 67% support the New York Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act, including support from more than three-quarters of Democrats, two-thirds of independents, and a plurality of Republicans.”

Read the letter from organizations here, and below.

Letter from elected officials

Letter from organizations

Background

The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act is widely popular – according to a new Siena poll, 82% of New York voters see single use plastic packaging as a problem, and nearly 70% of bipartisan New York voters support the bill. Notably, city and suburban voters in nearly equal measure say single-use plastic is a problem, with 83% of NYC voters and 85% of suburban voters. The strongest level of support was from Latino voters and women.

The legislation is also popular within the Legislature, with 78 cosponsors in the assembly and 34 in the senate — a majority in both houses. 

The Assembly Codes,Ways and Means, and Environmental Conservation Committees passed the bill and the bill is now in the Assembly Rules Committee. In the Senate, the legislation sits in the Finance Committee after passing the Environmental Conservation Committee. 

The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (S4246B Harckham/A5322AB 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 50% incrementally over 12 years;
• After 12 years, all packaging — including plastic, glass, cardboard, paper, and metal — must meet a recycling rate of 70%;
• Prohibit packaging’s worst toxic chemicals, including vinyl chloride, PFAS, and heavy metals;
• Not allow 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 proper compliance.

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 recently passed a resolution in support, and Mayor Adams released a memorandum of support in favor of the legislation. 

More than 300 organizations and businesses — including Beyond Plastics, NAACP, 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 already out of control and is expected to double in the next 20 years. As more of our energy comes from renewable sources, fossil fuel companies like Shell and Exxon are seeking to recoup falling profits by increasing plastics production and canceling out greenhouse gas reductions. In fact, half of all plastic in Earth’s history was produced in the last 20 years — the plastic we’re seeing now in our air, water, food, and bodies didn’t even exist before the year 2000. 

Plastic is made from fossil fuels and toxic chemicals. 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

Only about 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 testicles.   

In fact, new 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.