Every time you go to the grocery store, you can’t escape coming home with tons of packaging. 

Packaging constitutes a staggering 40 percent of New York State’s waste stream. Most of it is sent to landfills, burned in incinerators, or winds up polluting our streets, parks and rivers—and ultimately the Atlantic Ocean.

Fed up with the madness, several area residents traveled to Albany last Tuesday. Together with 300-plus other advocates, we called on state legislators to urge them to pass a pair of bills that would drastically cut the amount of packaging that enters New Yorkers’ lives. 

The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act would also eliminate a number of toxic chemicals—all of which negatively impact human health—that are currently used to make packaging, including the stuff that touches your food. It would not permit so-called “advanced” or “chemical recycling”—a chimeric quick fix proffered by the petrochemical industry—to count as real recycling. And it would transfer the cost of managing packaging waste from taxpayers to the companies that create it. 

Meanwhile, the companion Bigger Better Bottle Bill would modernize the state’s container deposit law, making it apply to all beverages. It would also increase the deposit amount, which, absurdly, hasn’t changed in more than 40 years! This would get litter off our streets while giving a much-needed raise to low-income folks who collect cans and bottles for a living. 

On February 27, advocates formed teams and met more than 100 lawmakers. Those of us from Sullivan County spoke with our own Assemblymember, Aileen Gunther, who pledged she would do her part to help get these bills passed. We also visited Assemblymember Juan Ardila of Queens, who enthusiastically promised to talk to Speaker Carl Heastie about the legislation. 

It’s time to make the polluters pay. We need Speaker Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins to bring these bills to the floor for a vote ASAP. We have no more time to waste on waste.

Rebekah Creshkoff
Callicoon, NY