Assemblyman Steve Englebright has proposed A.4117, which sets a goal in the state Environmental Conservation Law for New York to reduce, reuse, recycle or compost no less than 85% of the solid waste generated by the year 2032. It’s hard to tell if the Assembly bill will become law, however. Companion legislation has yet to be introduced in the state Senate with roughly two months left in the state legislative session.
California has already set a statewide approach to decrease reliance on landfills and set a goal of 75% for recycling, composting and solid waste reduction by 2022. The European Union also has targets for recycling 65% of municipal waste, 75% of packaging waste and reducing municipal waste in landfills to a maximum of 10% by 2030.
“We’ve heard some of my colleagues speak about moving solid waste off of Long Island to upstate,” Englebright said. “We’re talking about putting it into quarries for the most part. In Ohio, the great quarries, I used to go there when I was much younger to collect fossils. It hurts me to think we’re going to fill those classic geological sites with garbage. We need to do better. Part of that is to join together, and I sense that we are close to being joined together here on this issue, and to work together along with empowering the department to do the same. Setting this goal is an important — late, but I hope not too late — moment in the history of our state. We need to face this. I think we can solve this problem. We don’t need to send out waste to the great quarries sin the suburbs of Cincinnati. That’s nuts. We can do better.”
In 2020, the Jamestown Board of Public Utilities eliminated glass from its curbside recycling program because the market for glass recycling was so poor the utility company was losing money on glass recycling and because customers wanted the utility to collect other recyclables more often.