New York's Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act has passed the state Senate twice, counts 78 Assembly co-sponsors — two more than the 76 votes needed to pass a bill in that chamber — and has still never reached the Assembly floor. Whether it gets there in 2027 now hinges on a definitional question that has split Albany's Democratic majority: does chemical recycling count as recycling at all?

The industry says yes and is spending accordingly. The American Chemistry Council and its New York affiliate have reported $733,500 in lobbying spend so far this year at the state Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government, according to filings. That follows a doubling of the trade group's Albany outlay between 2022 and 2024 — from $484,000 to $931,000. The Senate and Assembly versions of PRRIA were the first and second most lobbied bills in the first half of 2025, and the second and third most lobbied in the second half, ranked by filings, lobbyists and clients.

PRRIA, first introduced in 2023, would mandate reductions in single-use plastic packaging, shift waste management costs from taxpayers to packaging producers, and ban a range of toxic chemicals from plastic products. Crucially for the material stream, it would bar chemical recycling processes from qualifying as "recycling" under New York law — a provision that has drawn the industry's fiercest opposition.

"These [facilities] are an environmental hazard," said state Sen. Pete Harckham, the bill's Senate sponsor. "They don't do what they say." He described chemical recycling as "a farce." Harckham's district-level critics in the industry counter that pyrolysis and other advanced conversion technologies are essential processing capacity for plastic streams that mechanical recycling cannot handle.

"One of our big priorities is to allow competition for advanced recycling [technologies]," Ross Eisenberg, president of America's Plastic Makers for the American Chemistry Council, said in an interview last fall. He argues the bill would raise consumer costs, particularly through its mandated single-use packaging reductions.

Competing bills have attracted industry support. The Affordable Waste Reduction Act, sponsored by Democratic Assemblymember Chantel Jackson and Sen. Monica Martinez, and a measure easing the regulatory burden on advanced recycling facilities, sponsored by Sen. Jeremy Cooney and Assemblymember Alicia Hyndman, both Democrats, would leave the definitional door open to chemical recycling.

Assemblymember Deborah Glick, who carries PRRIA in the lower chamber and retires this year, notes her bill would not ban advanced recycling outright. It would simply deny those facilities the legal label — and it would require the Department of Environmental Conservation to revisit the question every five years.

"I believe in innovation. I believe in science," Glick said. "If these technologies improve in some way — then the door is open."

The stakes for local governments are measured in budget lines. A 2018 report from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found local governments outside New York City spent $900 million collecting and disposing of waste after China's 2017 import restrictions made recycling more costly and complicated. The New York City Department of Sanitation carries a $1.97 billion budget this year.

The legislative arithmetic has not moved. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie told reporters earlier this year there were not enough votes to pass the bill and that he would not bring it to the floor — the same position he has taken in prior sessions, to the frustration of environmental advocates.

Anti-plastics groups argue chemical recycling is a distraction from source reduction, pointing to facilities that have struggled with economics and technology at commercial scale. The industry positions advanced recycling as complementary capacity. Neither side has resolved the question of what the tonnage actually processed by operating chemical recycling facilities amounts to versus nameplate capacity, and PRRIA's five-year DEC review clause is designed to force exactly that accounting.

Glick, for one, sees a silver lining in the lobbying onslaught. "I should get an award for having created the most lobbying jobs in Albany in the past two years," she said.

The milestone that decides what happens next: whether Heastie brings PRRIA to an Assembly floor vote in the 2027 session, and whether the chemical recycling exclusion survives conference negotiations if he does.