During a gaggle with reporters on Thursday, New York state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said the packaging reduction bill will be conferenced “as time runs out for non-budget legislation,” per Rebecca Lewis of City & State.
Advocates are hoping that leads to a floor vote, but the clock is ticking with session scheduled to end on June 4, and lawmakers still negotiating budget policy behind closed doors, six weeks past the April 1 deadline.
Last year, the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (A1749 Glick/S1464 Harckham), sponsored by the two environmental chairs in the Assembly and Senate, passed in the upper house, but ran out of time to get a floor vote in the Assembly.
The bill has been one of the most heavily lobbied in Albany.
It would require manufacturers to reduce single-use plastic packaging in the state by 30% over the next 12-15 years. It would also limit manufacturers’ use of certain chemicals and shift the financial responsibility for solid waste disposal from municipalities to big business.
Manufacturers say the bill will cost consumers money and limit choices.
“It’s going to force companies to change their production processes, change the materials they use, and in some cases, go from cheaper materials to more expensive materials. All of those things are going to add to the cost of goods to market,” said Vice President of the Business Council of New York Ken Pokalsky.
Environmentalists argue that’s not necessarily the case.
“The fact is, there is no credible evidence that prices are going to go up (for consumers),” said former EPA Administrator Judith Enck, the founder and president of Beyond Plastics and a vocal advocate supporting the plastic bill. “I have great faith in Consumer Reports. They, along with the NAACP, issued a memo of support on the Glick-Harckham bill saying ‘No increase in prices expected.'”
Advocates also point out that municipalities would save money on the back end in solid waste disposal.
Pokalsky points out that there’s no requirement in the bill that municipalities must pass savings onto taxpayers.
Just recently, the legislation went back for revisions with the intent of making it more palatable to the business and manufacturing community. It didn’t work, according to Pokalsky.
“They did a couple things that were useful that we agree with but they didn’t change the fundamental structure and purpose of the bill,” he said. “It still remains, at its heart, a bill to ban plastics, to ban chemicals and to restrict the use of packaging and that’s not what other states…have done.”
According to Enck, over the past two years, bill sponsors have made close to 70 changes to the bill to as concessions to industry, including lowering the percentage of required plastic reduction from 50% to 30%.
“I don’t love these changes,” she said. “(But) this, when adopted, will be the most sweeping packaging and plastics reduction bill in the nation.”