We can cut plastic pollution, reduce carbon emissions and support low-income communities with one move: fix New York’s broken Bottle Bill.
The bottle bill, adds a five-cent deposit on bottles and cans to incentivize people to recycle them. The system’s captured 150 billion bottles and cans to date -- it’s a key tool in fighting plastic pollution, but the system’s now creaking at the seams.
Five cents no longer serves as sufficient incentive to recycle and many of the drinks on our shelves are outside of the scope of the system. Studies have shown many of these bottles are prone to end up in the Hudson River where they break down and enter the Atlantic Ocean.
By raising the deposit and increasing the beverages included in the system, we can capture and recycle billions more bottles, and create a lifeline for the thousands of low-income New Yorkers who make a living collecting and recycling beverage containers.
There are powerful interests behind the status quo, that's why we need to flood legislators’ offices with one message: fight plastic pollution, fix New York’s bottle bill!