NJBIA opposed a controversial bill advanced by a Senate committee on Monday that would require producers of packaging products, and manufacturers that use these products, to implement stewardship plans aimed at reducing the amount of packaging disposed in landfills.
NJBIA Deputy Chief Government Affairs Officer Ray Cantor said S-3398, the “Packaging Product Stewardship Act,” is overly burdensome and impractical.
The bill was released by the Senate Environment and Energy Committee on Monday. Twice before at the committee’s hearings in December and January, action on the bill had been postponed after lengthly public testimony requesting amendments.
“While we have been working with the sponsor to make the bill something that is workable and that the business community can support, the bill remains far off from something we could support or even get to neutral on,” Cantor said.
“The legislation still sets unrealistic and costly packaging reductions, while also ignoring 40 years of systems that have made New Jersey one of the most successful recycling states in the nation,” Cantor said. “In short, this bill would upend those successful local recycling programs, while failing to replace them with something that can actually work to enhance recycling.”
The legislation would require certain manufacturers and distributors of products that utilize packaging to adopt and implement plans to decrease the amount of packaging that is disposed of as solid waste, and to pay an annual surcharge to the state, the proceeds of which would be used to improve the state’s recycling system.
The bill, in its definition of “recycling,” also excludes any chemical conversion process, which could effectively create a ban of the advanced recycling of plastics.
“The bill does not count advanced recycling toward recycling mandates and reductions in packaging,.” Cantor said. “By eliminating any incentive to use advanced recycling, it’s discounting the most promising new technology to recycle materials that currently are thrown away.”
Cantor also said the state Department of Environmental Protection would not have the capacity to manage or enforce any recycling stewardship plan, which the bill calls for.
NJBIA, however, did support a separate bill before the committee Monday that would direct DEP to select a consultant to perform a statewide needs assessment regarding recycling of packaging products. The bill, S-3815 sponsored by Sen. Vin Gopal (D-11), was also released by the committee on Monday.
“Before you can change a complex system it only makes sense to study that system, understand its strengths and weaknesses, and determine what is needed to improve it,” Cantor said.
The bill also establishes a “Statewide Recycling Needs Assessment Advisory Council” in DEP.
