Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)

For a quick summary of e-waste EPR Legislation in New York, click here.

Encourage your Assembly Member to pass ewaste EPR bill A09049!
Send an email, write a letter, or place a phone call to their office and let them know how important this initiative is for the future of our environment.
Find your Assembly Member's contact info here.

 

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), is a concept where manufacturers assume responsibility for their products throughout the entire lifecycle, from material selection to recovery and recycling. The theory is, if manufacturers are closely connected to the end-of-life management of their products, they will surely design products that do not need special disposal solutions and are easier to recycle.

Implementing an EPR change through legislation would relieve taxpayers and ratepayers of the cost of collecting and processing materials for safe disposal. Sustaining these costs on an ongoing basis is an unreasonable burden for municipal solid waste programs like OCRRA's.

To give some perspective, over the past 15+ years, OCRRA has invested over one million dollars to safely manage household hazardous waste and, electronic waste, in an environmentally sound manner. Special recycling programs for these materials, which contain potentially hazardous constituents, are necessary to protect our environment.

21 states and New York City have made special disposal burdens the responsibility of the product manufacturer instead of the local ratepayer or municipal recycling agency.

Many manufacturers embrace this shift in the disposal model. Companies realize that great environmental stewardship programs should not be undercut by a system that gives an advantage to less environmentally responsible companies. Basically, these policies develop manufacturer responsibility for their products at the end of their useful life. These policies improve recycling, create green jobs, and encourage producers to design more sustainable products, all at no costs to taxpayers / ratepayers.

Benefits include:

1) Conservation of natural resources, including oil and scarce metals needed for the manufacture of new materials
2) Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions associated with conserving those resources
3) Decrease in the quantity of heavy metals and other toxic / hazardous components entering the waste stream

To learn more about EPR, click here.

 

Bottle Bill

A hearty thank you goes out to all the residents in Onondaga County who wrote letters or signed petitions and voiced their opinion in favor of expanding the Bottle Bill. The 2009-10 state budget included passage of the Bigger Better Bottle Bill!

What this means:

• The update expands New York’s bottle return law to include water bottles, which comprise nearly a quarter of all beverages sold in New York. 
• The law also requires beverage companies to return 80% of the unclaimed bottle and can deposits to the state, generating upwards of $115 million annually for the General Fund.
• The law includes measures that will improve opportunities for New Yorkers to return their empty bottles and cans, including incentives for small business and nonprofit redemption centers and requirements for large stores to maintain dedicated areas for bottle and can returns. These provisions, plus the expansion and an increased handling fee, will lead to the creation of thousands of new jobs across the state. 
• This legislation brings New York into line with other states, such as Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Hawaii, and most recently Connecticut.

The expansion went into effect on October 31st, 2009.

According to the Container Recycling Institute, more than 3.2 billion water bottles were sold in New York State alone – nearly a quarter of the state’s total beverage sales. Bottled water represents 70% of the total noncarbonated beverage sales in New York which previous versions of the bill sought to capture. Water bottles are one of the most common items found in litter cleanups in New York. Without a deposit, most of these containers end up in the trash or polluting our communities.