Back in 1967 when the movie “The Graduate” got here out, “plastics” could have gave the look of the longer term.
Not these days.
“I hate that line in the movie,” quipped former EPA Administrator and present President of Beyond Plastics Judith Enck. “Imagine if the previous man mentioned to Dustin Hoffman, ‘the longer term is reusable?'”
In her post-EPA lifestyles, Enck has made restricting the manufacturing and use of a plastic her lifestyles’s paintings. When no longer in advocacy mode, Enck is educating the following technology of organizers as a senior fellow and visiting school member within the Center for the Advancement of Public Action at Bennington College.
Her challenge prior to the tip of Albany’s legislative consultation is passage of a longer manufacturer recycling bill, the “Packaging Reduction & Recycling Infrastructure Act,” backed through the chairs of the Environmental Conservation Committees in each properties — state Assemblymember Deborah Glick and Sen. Pete Harckham. (A5322/S4246).
The bill calls for corporations to scale back packaging through 50% over 12 years.
“My experience in government has taught me, you don’t do a big aspirational long-term goal like a big number by 2040,” Enck mentioned.
Instead, the ask of companies like Amazon is incremental: the bill calls for a ten% reduction in packaging in yr 3, a 20% reduction in yr 5. Ultimately, through yr 12, there will probably be a demand to scale back packaging through 50%.
“If there are problems, you can course correct,” Enck defined.
Companies that experience not up to $1 million in gross sales can be exempt from the legislation.
On Friday, the leaders of environmental organizations Beyond Plastics, Only One, and the Surfrider Foundation delivered over 13,000 petition signatures to legislative leaders Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Carl Heastie urging them to go the “Packaging Reduction & Recycling Infrastructure Act.”
The advocates also are pushing lawmakers to oppose chemical recycling.
“The plastics industry…is mostly trying to turn plastic waste into fossil fuel through the use of technologies called pyrolysis and gasification,” Enck mentioned. “We don’t think those technologies are smart; they also don’t exist without massive taxpayer subsid(ies).”
Here’s more about these technologies from the U.K. magazine Resource.
The New York Farm Bureau, the Business Council of New York State, Upstate United, the Retail Council of New York State and different trade teams are antagonistic to the bill for a couple of causes detailed here.
Maine, Oregon, California, and Colorado have already handed variations of a longer manufacturer accountability legislation.