Environmental advocates are renewing their push for a state law that would reduce the amount of plastic packaging New Yorkers would get in their next delivery or at restaurants.
The bill, titled the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act, would require the state to cut down on plastic packaging use by 30% over 12 years. To hit that target, the state would charge companies for excess packaging, and those profits would then be distributed to municipalities.
“It's just crystal clear that the only way we're going to see less single use plastic packaging is if a law is adopted to require just that,” said Judith Enck, a former EPA Regional Administrator who now serves as president of Beyond Plastics.
The bill — which is cosponsored by state Sen. Pete Harckham, a Westchester County Democrat, and Assemblymember Deborah Glick, D-Manhattan — passed in the Senate last year but did not get considered by the Assembly in time. If passed, the bill would also prohibit the use of PFAS chemicals in packaging. More than 30 localities in the state are supporting the bill, including Albany County, Rochester and New York City.
The push to reduce plastic packaging has a long history in New York: the New York Public Interest Research Group conducted a study in 1990 to document what items sold in stores have more plastic packaging than they really need.
From that list included the pantyhose brand that was in vogue during the 1970s and 1980s: L’Eggs. Additionally items cited included Gorton's microwave dinners from General Mills and Hawaiian Punch juice boxes.
Enck, who recently rediscovered the 1990 report, was curious to follow up on it 35 years later. That report, published by Beyond Plastics on Friday and released first to the New York Public News Network, has a simple but clear message: the overabundance of plastic packaging remains an unresolved issue in the state.
“None of us voted for more plastic,” Enck said. “It's just been foisted upon us, and that's why we need state legislation to turn off the plastics tap.”
One example of an overly packaged item that Beyond Plastics listed in their 2025 report was Kraft Singles’ individually packaged cheese.
“Like every slice of cheese is wrapped in film plastic, when you can easily buy cheese at a supermarket or a bodega that's not individually wrapped in plastic,” she said.
Enck said the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act puts a check on companies for their use of plastic packaging. Research shows 5 to 6% of all plastic items in the country actually get recycled.
“The major point here is that companies that are flooding our stores and homes and the environment with so much single use plastic, they have no skin in the game in terms of financially being responsible for what happens to all of this packaging — that is a burden carried by you and I, as taxpayers,” Enck said.
