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EDITORIAL: Find a way to pass a packaging reduction bill



There’s a saying that goes, “When you try to please everyone, you wind up pleasing no one.”

There’s a word for that: compromise.

After more than two years of trying to overcome intensive lobbying by the package industry trade associations and the business lobby, the sponsors of the landmark Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act introduced amendments earlier this week to water down the act to make it more palatable in hopes of convincing the full Legislature to pass it.

The Senate passed the bill during the last legislative session, but it failed to make it through the Assembly, where it remains in committee.

According to a report in Greenwire, which reports on energy and environmental news, sponsors have taken out some key provisions of the bill — including most notably the creation of an Office of the Recycling Inspector General to enforce the law, increasing the role of private waste haulers and recycling companies, increasing the timeline for complying with the act, and narrowing the list of banned chemicals, Greenwire reported. The amended bill also exempts smaller producers from the requirements and decreases the penalties for violations.

According to the Greenwier report, opponents and supporters are both unhappy, with environmentalists saying the changes go too far and business and trade saying they don’t go far enough.

With negotiations over the state budget likely dragging into May, lawmakers may run out of time before the current legislative session ends in mid-June to hammer out an agreement on this bill — likely ensuring that this vital environmental legislation to reduce plastics and toxic chemicals remains in limbo for at least another year.

Lawmakers can’t allow this to happen.

While their legislative leaders are mired in budget talks, the heads of the relevant Senate and Assembly committees need to be bringing the opposing sides to the table to hear their respective positions, find the areas of agreement and narrow the gaps of disagreement.

What can they do to address enforcement and penalties? Is it vital that certain chemicals be included in the bill or is it a safe compromise to exclude them? In what ways can they reduce the burden on business without significantly undermining the bill’s intent and effectiveness?

Then lawmakers are going to have to do what we taxpayers pay them to do — make a decision solely on what’s best for the citizens of New York.

And what’s best for the citizens of New York is getting an effectively intact version of this bill passed this year so that the state can begin to fulfill its goal to reduce plastic waste in the environment.

Not everyone will come away happy. But that’s a far better result than continuing to do nothing.