New York City knows it has a waste management problem. The average city household generated 1,899 pounds of trash in 2023. Only around 17 percent of the city’s curbside waste is recycled, despite efforts to change, such as the city’s 2020 plastic bag ban.
Much of the city’s solid garbage and waste, if it is not incinerated, ends up in large landfills upstate, in neighboring states including Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and further south in Virginia.
A bill to winnow the waste, the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (PRRIA), has been debated throughout the state’s legislative session this spring. The Senate approved the measure; it is still in play in the Assembly’s Ways and Means Committee with only a few days left.
The proposal would reduce the amount of non-recyclable packaging in the city by 30 percent over the next 12 years and make packaging producers contribute more to recycling efforts and disposal.
And it faces tough opposition.
Businesses as well as companies with links to the petroleum and chemical industry have fought PRRIA, complaining about its “unworkable mandates,” scope and potential cost. The state Business Council issued a statement, signed by nearly 100 businesses and trade organizations, including from the plastics industry, that this year’s bill was little different from earlier failed proposals and did “nothing to address business’ key concerns.”