New York’s Plastic Waste Crisis Is Coming To A Head. A Landmark Bill May Be The Answer — If It Can Pass.

By Elise Klein | New York Public News Network

Two major New York landfills are set to close in 2028. Plastic recycling rates hover around 5 to 6 percent. And every year, New York City alone spends roughly half a billion dollars managing waste through local tax revenue.

Against that backdrop, a growing coalition of environmental advocates and state lawmakers is making a renewed push for legislation they say could fundamentally change who bears the cost of plastic pollution — and how much of it gets made in the first place.

The bill is called the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act, known informally as the PRIA bill. It would require companies to reduce their plastic packaging by 30 percent over 12 years, eliminate certain toxic chemicals from packaging materials, and impose a fee on producers — shifting the financial burden away from consumers and municipalities.

“We have to get at the source,” said Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics and a former regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Ultimately, it needs to be the producers of all this plastic waste that are responsible for that waste.”

A Crisis With a Ticking Clock

The urgency behind the bill is difficult to overstate. New York’s two largest landfills — one in Suffolk County, one in Ontario County — are both scheduled to close in 2028, squeezing the state’s capacity to dispose of the plastic waste it generates.

On Long Island, the situation is already more dire. Because the region lacks sufficient landfill space, most waste there is incinerated. The toxic ash is then transported to the Brookhaven landfill — which is also slated to close.

“We’re going to have to transport all that waste and toxic ash to upstate New York, to out of state,” said Randall Sorcher, a Nassau County resident who volunteers with the Beyond Plastics campaign and has made numerous trips to Albany to advocate for the bill. “The further you transport your waste, the more tax dollars get spent on it. So we want less waste, which will result in lower taxes.”

A 2025 needs assessment study from the Center for Sustainable Materials Management found that a significant portion of plastic materials — including plastic bags, plastic jugs, and bulky plastics — are not accepted in recycling programs, with acceptance rates ranging from below 60 percent to about 75 percent depending on the material.

The Bill’s Backers Say the Public Is Ready

Legislative sponsors of the PRIA bill point to polling data to argue the moment is right. A 2025 survey found that 73 percent of New Yorkers believe large companies should be required to reduce packaging on their products.

“People understand because they are receiving all of this trash that they then have to either pay a hauler to take away or are paying through their taxes to have their municipality get rid of it,” said one bill sponsor at a recent press conference.

Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, the bill’s longtime champion in the lower chamber, argues the legislation would improve affordability precisely because costs would fall on large plastic producers — companies that generate hundreds of billions of dollars in gross output across the United States — rather than on consumers.

“In fact, the public is paying for all of the cost of disposal,” Glick said. “All of the costs, even though they have no control over how much waste is sent to them at home.”

Industry Pushes Back — And Questions Persist About Cost

The bill faces powerful opposition from business and industry groups, who argue it would drive up prices and disrupt supply chains.

“Simply put, it’s a bad bill,” said Ken Bukowski of the Business Council of New York State. “It’s very different from what other states have done. It really focuses on material bans and very unworkable source reduction mandates.”

Patrick Krieger of the Plastics Industry Association said his organization supports enhanced producer responsibility, or EPR, legislation in other states — including Minnesota, Washington, and Maryland — but has concerns about New York’s version. “This bill is not well crafted,” he said. “What it will result in is something that’s more expensive for New Yorkers and with worse environmental outcomes.”

Some lawmakers share those anxieties. “If you’re going to pass a policy that has the potential to spike food prices further — because of having to change packaging materials — that’s a huge concern,” said one assembly member who opposes the bill. “People are hurting right now.”

Glick pushes back on those arguments, citing two studies. A 2020 analysis from Resource Recycling Systems found no correlation between EPR policies and product prices in jurisdictions where similar laws have passed. A 2022 Columbia University study concluded that even if compliance with EPR policies doubled packaging costs, the impact on grocery spending would average below 1 percent.

“That’s all industry has to do in this environment,” Glick said of cost warnings from lobbyists. “Even if there is no data to suggest that’s true.”

A Competing Bill Muddies the Waters

The PRIA bill isn’t the only plastic packaging legislation in play this session. A competing measure, the Affordable Waste Reduction Act, is modeled after EPR legislation adopted in Minnesota. Its supporters say it takes a more practical approach — focused on improving recycling infrastructure and diverting materials from landfills, while keeping costs manageable for consumers and businesses.

“It really focuses on making recycling work better, diverting more material from disposal back into productive reuse,” Bukowski said. “We think that’s doable. We think that’s affordable.”

State Senator Monica Martinez, a Democrat who sponsored the competing bill, said she crafted it as an alternative because she worried the PRIA bill would push products off store shelves. “The prices will go up, some things will come off the shelf that they can’t eat or utilize,” she said. “And so that’s why I created an alternative.”

State Senator Mario Mattera, a Republican representing parts of Suffolk County and a rare GOP co-sponsor of the Affordable Waste Reduction Act, called it “a more business-friendly approach” that puts the onus on producers “to be smarter with their packaging.”

But PRIA advocates reject the premise that more recycling can solve the problem. “Plastic recycling clocks in at only 5 to 6 percent,” Enck said. “Giving more money for plastic recycling doesn’t get microplastics out of our bodies, doesn’t get it out of our rivers, doesn’t address the serious climate and health issues associated with plastic.”

State Senator Rachel May, a Democrat representing parts of Syracuse and a supporter of the PRIA bill, said the fundamental issue is that plastics are too varied and chemically complex to recycle effectively at scale. “There are thousands of different compounds that make them up and they don’t play well together,” she said.

The Affordable Waste Reduction Act failed to make it out of committee in either chamber last year. The PRIA bill passed the Senate but never came to a floor vote in the Assembly.

Timing Is Everything

For the PRIA bill, the challenge has always been the Assembly — and within it, the clock.

The bill has passed the Senate twice. Each year, it lands on the Assembly floor calendar late in June, in the final frantic days of the legislative session, when many members are mentally checked out or focused on other commitments.

“Most lawmakers are checked out and engaged in other off-session responsibilities and events,” Glick acknowledged.

This year, she says she wants to bring the bill to the floor earlier — ideally in the weeks immediately following passage of the state budget, which is due April 1. If the budget doesn’t run into overtime, that would leave roughly six weeks before the end of session in early June.

Glick is also candid about a persistent dynamic: some members who tell bill sponsors they’re supportive quietly express reservations to the Assembly speaker — unwilling to trigger a long debate but also unwilling to vote yes.

“I think that’s what happened last year,” she said.

Despite those challenges, advocates and sponsors say they believe this session is different — that the urgency of closing landfills, the costs already borne by taxpayers, and years of incremental groundwork have built enough momentum to finally push the PRIA bill across the finish line.

“We all grew up hearing the sing-song phrase ‘reduce, reuse, recycle,'” Enck said. “But in fact we do very little on reduction and reuse. And this bill changes that.”

Image: A plastic water bottle and plastic bags are seen discarded with other garbage in a corner trash can in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, Wednesday, March 27, 2019 in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)