Commissioner Anderson Calls for Extended Producer Responsibility Legislation

May 15, 2026

Remarks as Prepared

Every single day, the men and women of the Department of Sanitation pick up 24 million pounds of trash and recycling. That’s 50 Statues of Liberty. 1,000 school buses. 2,000 full-grown elephants. 

Every. Single. Day.

And the vast majority of this material is shipped to landfills left to decompose over centuries to come.

The Department of Sanitation has worked for years to encourage New Yorkers to reduce, reuse, and recycle their waste, in that order:

• Reduce your consumption.
• Reuse what can be reused.
• And separate your recyclable materials so that we can pick them up and deliver them to facilities that give them new life.

But New Yorkers are at the end of the line of a gargantuan economy built around the basic premise of consumption — of resources, of energy, of water, of everything our planet offers. This economy, and the corporations that profit off of it, have no incentive to make things that are reusable, or that last longer, or that create less waste at the end of life.

When you buy a product, you have no say in how it’s packaged. Does it come in a plastic bottle? An aluminum can? A multi-layered pouch? And when you order online, there are layers and layers of packaging — boxes in boxes, plastic bags inside plastic bags.

So much of what we throw away in New York City is packaging. All of that packaging needs to be disposed of or recycled. And that is labor intensive, and energy intensive. And consumers have very little say in the whole process.

Even recycling isn’t always perfect. Some products can be remade into new packaging, others get down-cycled into lesser products. And all this relies on New Yorkers properly separating these products and our ability to sort them at the end of the line.

That is why producers and retailers of packaging need to be held responsible for the material they create.

Extended Producer Responsibility legislation does just that. In New York state, we have successfully implemented EPR laws for paint, batteries and other electronics.

An EPR bill for packaging is long overdue. That’s why, as New York City’s Sanitation Commissioner, I am proud to call for the State to enact the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (PRRIA).

This is a proven approach that leads to higher resource recovery, lower greenhouse gas emissions, increased investment in recycling jobs and infrastructure, higher quality products, and cost savings for municipalities.

This year, we have another opportunity to get it done.

And we need your voices.

I am grateful for the coalition that has brought such momentum to this issue, including Judith Enck, our sponsors Assembly Member Glick and Senator Harckham and countless other advocates and legislators.

Together, we call on our lawmakers in Albany to finally pass this bill that will reduce waste, slash pollution and incentivize more sustainable product design across New York.