2 New Bills Aim to Reduce Plastic Pollution in New York State

Two bills introduced in the New York state assembly this month would place far-reaching requirements on plastic manufacturers, mandating that they pay for waste management and dramatically increase recycling rates, among other things.

While other states have also put forward proposals to get plastic pollution under control, Rachel Karasik, a policy associate at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, told Grist that few are as comprehensive as New York’s proposed legislation. Karasik added that one of the bills was notable for explicitly barring so-called "chemical recycling" from being counted toward mandatory recycling benchmarks.