Great Lakes Restoration Success Stories – Video Series Premiere!

Image by Ray Miller from Pixabay

Join Us on March 6th as we premiere short videos that demonstrate what successful Great Lakes restoration looks like in New York

To kick off Great Lakes Week*, CCE and our partners at Audubon NY are hosting a virtual premiere of our video series on Great Lakes restoration success stories in New York State.

New York's Great Lakes waters, including Lake Erie, the Niagara River, Lake Ontario, and the St. Lawrence River, provide drinking water to 6.2 million New Yorkers. The Great Lakes basin covers 40% of the entire surface area of the state! Major investments have been made in successful efforts to restore the lakes in NY, but what does “Great Lakes restoration” actually look like? We’ve produced four short videos that highlight what successful projects look like and the many benefits they provide to New York.

Video Premiere Details:
Date: Monday, March 6, 2023
Time: 11:00am – 12:00pm
Where: Zoom (register here)

The videos highlight the following projects:

• Protecting clean water and providing job opportunities with green infrastructure in the City of Buffalo

• Upgrading a wastewater treatment plant to stop sewage overflows in Lake Erie

• Using “nature-based solutions” to protect the health of Lake Ontario

• Fighting harmful algal blooms in Cayuga Lake (Finger Lake located within the Great Lakes watershed)

Learn more about the work that has been done to restore and protect New York’s treasured Great Lakes, the work left to do, and why we need continued state and federal investment in protecting clean water in New York!

*March 6th kicks off Great Lakes week in Washington DC. That week, CCE and our partners at the Healing Our Waters Great Lakes Coalition will be in DC to meet with members of Congress on the importance of protecting our Great Lakes!

Sincerely,
Your Friends at CCE

Reduce Waste and Increase Recycling in New York

Photo by Tom Fisk: https://www.pexels.com/photo/bird-s-eye-view-of-landfill-during-daytime-3174345/

Hold manufacturers—not taxpayers—responsible for their waste!

New York State is suffering from a solid waste and recycling crisis—recycling costs for municipalities and taxpayers have skyrocketed, recycling rates have declined, and our environment and health are suffering from pollution caused by excessive plastic packaging. Currently, corporate brand owners bear no responsibility in managing the product packaging waste they have created.

To help address this solid waste crisis, Governor Hochul included the Waste Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act in her 2023-24 budget proposal, while Senator Harckham has proposed even stronger legislation in the NYS Senate (S.4246-Harckham). The policy requires product manufacturers—not taxpayers—to be responsible for the cost of collecting and recycling the packaging and paper they create. A strong, effective policy will reduce packaging waste, increase recycling, eliminate toxic chemicals in packaging, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and save local governments across the state hundreds of millions of dollars annually!

Email Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Assemblymember Deborah Glick, Chair of the Assembly Environmental Conservation Committee, and urge the Assembly to include a strong Waste Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act in the 2023-24 budget.

BACKGROUND

Plastic packaging and paper recycling are in crisis: New York generates more than 17 million tons of municipal solid waste annually. An estimated 40 percent of that waste is composed of product packaging and paper products, such as plastic containers, steel cans, plastic film, glass bottles, paper, and cardboard. Unfortunately, less than 20% of this waste is being recycled properly. Instead of being recycled, much of this waste ends up as litter in our communities, shipped to landfills, or burned in trash incinerators.

Costs to local governments—and taxpayers—have skyrocketed: Municipalities were once getting paid for recyclables, but now they must pay to recycle. Instead of generating revenue from recyclables, many municipalities face recycling costs in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars per year. The solid waste and recycling crisis is estimated to cost New York’s local governments $180 - 230 million annually. Local officials are now forced to consider raising fees on residents and/or reducing the recycling services provided to their communities.

New York’s waterways are suffering from increased plastic pollution: All too often, plastic packaging is littering our communities, ultimately making its way into our treasured rivers, lakes, bays, and ocean. Plastics do not biodegrade once they enter the environment—instead they break down into tiny pieces known as microplastics, which are frequently mistaken for food and ingested by fish and other aquatic wildlife. Recent research indicates that Lake Erie contains 381 metric tons of plastic—more than 50 times greater than the previous estimates at the surface. In NY/NJ Harbor Estuary, there are an estimated 165 million plastic particles floating in the water at any given time. In Long Island Sound coastal communities, voluntary clean ups report finding over 110,000 pounds of marine debris on beaches over the last 8 years.

Large Brands are Failing to Take Responsibility: Currently, manufacturers bear no responsibility for disposing of packaging waste they create. Large brands have externalized the cost of disposing of packaging onto our municipal recycling programs and local taxpayers.  For example, an estimated 165 billion packages are shipped in the U.S. every year, and yet companies currently bear no responsibility for managing any of this packaging waste that their businesses create.  Instead, taxpayers are shouldering the financial burden for disposal.

The Solution to Reducing Waste and Saving Taxpayers Money: Hold Manufacturers Responsible for their Waste! The Waste Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (often referred to as Extended Producer Responsibility or EPR) would require manufacturers to take responsibility for their products throughout their entire product life cycle, by bearing the cost of properly recycling their packaging and printed paper. Not only does this provide relief to taxpayers, but it also drives producers to minimize packaging materials, improve recyclability, and reduce the toxicity of their products. These policies have existed in Canada and the EU for decades and resulted in recycling rates upwards of 80%.

Thank you for taking action. Together we make a difference!

Sincerely,
Your friends at CCE

Highlights and Happenings: January 2023

Image by planet_fox from Pixabay

Help CCE build on our success, and support our campaigns to protect public health and the environment in NY and CT. 
Make a contribution today.

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Highlights

Pushing for our Environmental Priorities in the NYS Budget
We were in Albany for Governor Hochul’s 2023 State of the State address and were thrilled to see some of our top priorities for the year highlighted and included in the Governor’s budget proposal. We’ll be in Albany for the next few months urging our Assembly and Senate members to include some of our key priorities in the final budget, including:

• Waste Reduction and Recycling: Ensures that manufacturers, not taxpayers, pay for the cost of recycling product packaging. This will help to cut plastic pollution, increase recycling, and save local governments money.

• PFAS Cleanup: Provides $60 million to local governments to clean up toxic “forever chemicals” and protect drinking water.

• Environmental Protection Fund (EPF): We are pushing for at least $400 million in the EPF, including robust funding to support protection of our ocean, Great Lakes, and estuaries.

• Clean Water Funding: We are pushing for a billion dollar investment in much-needed clean water infrastructure improvements, including upgrading sewer systems, treating drinking water for emerging contaminants, replacing lead pipes, and more.

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Happenings

Transitioning to Offshore Wind
New York is poised to be a national leader in offshore wind, with five wind farms already selected and a mandate of 9,000MW of offshore wind by 2035. This will not only bring environmental and health benefits to our communities but will also create thousands of jobs and make NY a hub of offshore wind development. January saw some more big milestones for offshore wind:

• Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) released a draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for Sunrise Wind. This project, located approximately 30 miles off Montauk, will generate 924 MW of energy and power nearly 600,000 Long Island homes via a cable connection to the Holbrook substation. We attended a series of public hearings in January; thanks to all who joined and spoke up for wind!

• BOEM hosted three public meetings on the DEIS for the Empire Wind project, which will power over a million homes throughout NYC and Nassau County. Thanks to all who joined and spoke up in favor of wind, and everyone who submitted written comments in January.

• NYS hosted public meetings last month on the Beacon Wind project as part of their Article VII permitting process. The Beacon Wind project will be located approximately 60 miles off the coast of Montauk and will generate 1,230MW of energy, enough to power over 600,000 homes in NYC. If you missed it, you can submit written comments until February 17th.

Move School Away from the Brookhaven Landfill
Last month we stood with Javien Coleman’s mother as she announced a lawsuit against South Country Central School District and the Town of Brookhaven. Her son sadly passed away at age 13 from cancer after being exposed to toxics, such as TCE and benzene. Javien went to Frank P. Long Intermediate School, which is adjacent to the landfill and has a history of air quality and health issues in the community. We are strongly urging the school board to move the school in order to protect students and teachers. The school has been featured in the documentary “Sick School” on Netflix.

Protecting Pollinators from Toxic Pesticides
We are working to protect our pollinators from toxic neonicotinoid (neonics) pesticides throughout New York. Neonics decimate pollinator populations, contaminate water resources, and harm human health. In January, we joined our partners for a statewide virtual lobby day in support of the Birds and Bees Protection Act. We met with New York elected officials to discuss the importance of banning certain uses of neonics which pose the highest risks to pollinators. This is one of our top priorities for 2023 and we’ll be in Albany in the following months fighting to get this crucial bill passed this year.

Patchogue Gets a Living Shoreline
We had a great time with our partners at the Protecting the Environment in Patchogue (PEP) committee, Suffolk County Executive Bellone, and Secretary of State Rodriguez celebrating the groundbreaking of the largest “living shoreline” on the south shore of Long Island. This $5 million project will help to protect the coast from flooding as it acts as a buffer and reef for different species. We hope to see more projects like this on Long Island and across the state!

Kicking off the LI Sound High School Summit
We were busy in January providing presentations to participating students for this year’s Long Island Sound High School Summit. We have 8 Long Island schools participating and are currently developing projects that they will present at the Summit in May. Students’ projects aim to advance protection and restoration of Long Island Sound and this year include researching how light pollution impacts crabs, conducting water quality monitoring in local embayments, studying the impacts of plastic pollution on local beaches, and more. We are excited to see all the great projects! Thank you to the Long Island Sound Study and the Long Island Sound Futures Funding for their generous support of this program.