Protecting New York's Environment

Reducing Excessive & Wasteful Product Packaging By 30%

While packaging is an unavoidable and necessary component of consumer goods, plastic if often significantly overused in relation to the size of the product being sold, which has a damaging effect on the environment. Plastic packaging is difficult to sort and recycle, the plastic film regularly found on a vast number of products isn’t recyclable at all, and plastic requires a lot of landfill volume.

The excessive use of plastic also saps natural energy resources – plastic is a petroleum based product and larger sized products create inefficiencies in shipping that require additional use of gasoline.

It’s estimated that an additional 15,000 tons of garbage will be created in New York City in the early December holiday shopping season – enough waste to fill 1000 garbage trucks. And the plastic wrapping associated with packaging on consumer goods accounts for 3000 tons of waste every week in the City, compared with 200 tons of Styrofoam and 2000 tons of plastic bags. Packaging materials account for nearly one-third of all municipal waste.

I recently announced that I will introduce legislation to reduce the amount of harmful excessive packaging materials commonly found on consumer products by 30% in 10 years. The legislation will direct the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to write new packaging regulations to achieve this goal and take into account public comment in drafting these new rules. The European Union and other countries have already passed laws regulating the amount and type of packaging used on consumer goods.

On the eve of the holiday shopping season this past November, I announced that I will introduce legislation to reduce excessive & wasteful product packaging. To read the press release from the announcement event, click here