As Plastic Polluters Mislead the Public, Lawmakers and Advocates Correct the Record on Costs and Chemical Recycling
The Reality Is, the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act Will Save New Yorkers Money Without Raising Costs
For Immediate Release: June 2, 2026
Contacts: Marissa Solomon — marissa@pythiapublic.com, (734) 330-0807
ALBANY, N.Y. — This morning, advocates and lawmakers held a news conference to debunk the plastic, big oil, and petrochemical industries’ misleading claims about the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act. As the legislation gains momentum, the plastic and petrochemical industries are coming out in droves, increasingly spreading false information without any credible evidence to back up their claims. At the news conference, speakers shared credible data about how passing the legislation will reduce costs for New Yorkers without raising costs, and addressed the false solution of chemical recycling.
“Plastic and petrochemical lobbyists are spreading misleading information and spending millions against this bill, instead of just finding better ways to package products with less plastic. They don’t want the public to know that there’s no credible evidence to back up their claims, or that packaging only makes up 2% of a products’ total price. We need the legislature to bring the bill to a vote now, so that these industries can no longer freeride off of the New Yorkers whose tax dollars pay to clean up their pollution,” said former EPA regional administrator, president of Beyond Plastics, and co-author of the new book “The Problem with Plastic.”
In a new op-ed in City & State, New York City Sanitation Commissioner Gregory Anderson urges lawmakers to pass the legislation. Anderson writes:
“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.”
Read Commissioner Anderson’s op-ed here.
PRRIA Won’t Raise Costs for Consumers
The plastic, big oil, and petrochemical industries, along with massive corporations that use plastic, have been lobbying and spending heavily to kill the bill for years. The legislation continues to be one of the most-lobbied bills. Opposition claims the legislation will cause prices to go up, but they have no evidence to support their scare tactics.
According to Consumer Reports, "It is important to note that there is no evidence that consumer prices go up as a result of an extended producer responsibility (EPR) policy. A study funded by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality analyzed actual prices of products on shelves before and after EPR legislation was passed in Canada and found that they did not increase. In Europe, which has had packaging EPR programs in operation for over 35 years, prices have also remained stable." Packaging is typically only 2% of the total cost of a product, and in fact, it's plastic itself that's expensive — plastic is made out of fossil fuels, and oil prices are rising right now due to the Iran war.
Why Chemical Recycling Is a Greenwashing Scam
These industries are also fighting hard against the bill because they want to continue misleading the public about chemical recycling, or “advanced recycling,” and PRRIA would not allow chemical recycling to count as real recycling. Chemical recycling is a polluting process that uses high heat or chemicals to turn plastic waste into small amounts of fossil fuels or feedstocks to produce new plastic products. It’s a pseudo, greenwashed-solution to our waste crisis that’s allowing companies to exponentially increase the amount of plastic — and greenhouse gases — they put into the world under the guise of recycling. This video from a chemical recycling plant in Ohio shows black smoke billowing into the air — it is clearly not the clean recycling process that the petrochemical industry wants the public to think it is.
Chemical recycling is not a new idea; companies have been trying for decades to make it work but it does not work at scale. As a result, chemical recycling plants across the U.S. face delays, barriers, and cost overruns – not to mention their release of hazardous air pollutants, or the fire dangers posed by stockpiling waste plastic on site.
When Beyond Plastics published its report, “Chemical Recycling: A Dangerous Deception” in 2023, there were only eleven constructed facilities in the U.S. and most were not operating at full capacity due to a combination of financial challenges and technological difficulties. Since then, four of the eleven have closed.
BACKGROUND
Adoption of the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (S1464A Harckham/A1749A Glick) will transform the way our goods are packaged. It will dramatically reduce waste and ease the burden on taxpayers by making companies, not taxpayers, cover the cost of managing packaging. The bill will:
Reduce single-use packaging by 30% incrementally over 12 years;
Require most packaging — including plastic, cardboard, paper, and metal — to meet recycling rates;
Prohibit the harmful process known as chemical recycling to count toward achieving these recycling rates;
Prohibit the worst toxic chemicals to be used in packaging, including all PFAS chemicals, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), lead, mercury, and formaldehyde; and
Establish a modest fee on packaging paid by big companies, with new revenue going to local taxpayers.
A 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. A new analysis from Beyond Plastics builds on this report, and finds that nine selected communities across New York state could benefit by more than $411 million each year after adopting the legislation from annual waste reduction savings, as well as an estimate of the revenue local governments will make when plastic polluters pay.
Because this bill will save New Yorkers money and protect their health, a bipartisan 73% of New York voters are in favor of the bill. More than 300 organizations and businesses — including Beyond Plastics, Hip Hop Caucus, Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, League of Women Voters, Environmental Advocates, NYPIRG, Earthjustice, and others — issued a memo of support stating, “This bill would save tax dollars and position New York as a global leader in reducing plastic pollution.”
This fight is David v. Goliath. Last year, there were a whopping 106 registered businesses and organizations working against the bill — megacorporations like ExxonMobil, Shell, McDonald’s, Amazon, and Coca-Cola. Read more about the lobbying around PRRIA here.
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 products are made from fossil fuels and may contain as many as 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. 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 contains as many as 16,000 chemicals — many of them toxic. Over the past two decades, many retailers and manufacturers have already begun to voluntarily phase out some of these toxic chemicals like BPA (demonstrating that removing chemicals can be done!), but PFAS, PVC, mercury, and more are still in plastic, making their way into our bodies.
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 microplastic particles 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: 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.
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