Opinion: New York City is drowning in packaging. A bill in Albany can help.

Every single day, the men and women of the Department of Sanitation pick up 24 million pounds of trash and recycling. That’s the equivalent of 50 Statues of Liberty, 1,000 school buses or 2,000 full-grown African elephants.

The vast majority of this material is shipped to landfills, where it is left to decompose over centuries – at a significant financial cost. Transporting New York City waste out of the region costs taxpayers $550 million per year.

The Department of Sanitation has for years encouraged New Yorkers to reduce what they use, reuse what they can and to recycle or compost what’s left so we can give products new life.  

But we are at the end of a gargantuan economy built around the premise of consuming more and more. When New Yorkers buy products they need, no matter how conscientious they are, they have no say in how those products will be packaged. Corporations have no incentive to make things that are reusable, longer-lasting or less wasteful.  

We see it every day – plastic packaging inside plastic packaging and boxes inside boxes, and sometimes all of the above. You can see it, too, in your own online orders or on a city block on the night before recycling collection, with stacks of cardboard and plastic waste set out for pickup. 

So much of what we throw away in New York City is packaging, and it all needs to go somewhere, either to a landfill, a waste-to-energy facility or a recycling facility. Yes, recycling is a better option, but it, too, is labor- and energy-intensive. It is an imperfect solution, at best. 

Producers have us drowning in packaging. And it is producers who must be held responsible for what they create. 

An Extended Producer Responsibility bill that would give large producers a financial incentive to reduce packaging is currently before our legislators in Albany. 

The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (S1464A/A1749A) would reduce single-use packaging by 30% and make companies, not taxpayers, cover the cost of managing packaging. New York City taxpayers could save as much as $818 million in the next decade, according to a report from Beyond Plastics, which supports the bill.

Big businesses have campaigned against this legislation, threatening higher costs for consumers. But this legislation does not add new costs to products. Rather, it shifts the cost of packaging disposal from taxpayers to corporations. 

These corporations are known for their innovations. If this legislation is passed, I have no doubt they can figure out a way to ship an “eco-friendly” wooden highlighter without two plastic sleeves, a paper envelope and a bubble mailer, to give just one example cited by Beyond Plastics President Judith Enck at a press conference earlier this month.  

Extended Producer Responsibility is a proven approach – implemented already in California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington – that leads to less unnecessary packaging, higher resource recovery, lower greenhouse gas emissions and cost savings for municipalities.

We have successfully implemented similar laws for paint, batteries and other electronics. This year, we have an opportunity to enact this for packaging. 

I am grateful for the coalition that has come together to advocate for this bill. Together, we call on our lawmakers in Albany to take action before this session ends and pass a bill that will slash pollution by significantly reducing the 24 million pounds of material New York City’s sanitation workers collect daily.