Dear John,
While the weather remains pretty cold outside, the legislative calendar is heating up in Augusta.
This Wednesday, February 26, the Environment and Natural Resources Committee will consider LD 2104, An Act To Support and Increase the Recycling of Packaging, an important bill to reform recycling in Maine.
We want to pack the room with a big turn out so our legislators know how important improving recycling in Maine is to our environment and economy.
Will you help us turn up the heat on our lawmakers to make recycling more efficient and fair to taxpayers in Maine? Here are the details of the hearing and how to RSVP:
WHAT
Public Hearing on LD 2104
An Act To Support and Increase the Recycling of Packaging
WHERE
Maine State House
Cross Office Building, Room 216
Augusta, ME
WHEN
February 26, 2020
10:00 AM
RSVP >>
Right now, Maine taxpayers must unfairly cover the full cost of recycling. With the taxpayer bill for packaging alone totaling an estimated $16 million to $17.5 million each year, many municipalities are scaling back or eliminating recycling programs due to cost.
Big corporations that are flooding Maine with packaging pay nothing for the growing volume of waste they create, so they have no incentive to design less wasteful packaging or to ensure that packaging is recyclable and ultimately recycled.
LD 2104 will save taxpayer money by making recycling more effective, sustainable, and equitable. It would implement Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for Packaging so that large corporations like Amazon and Walmart pay their fair share by helping to finance recycling programs and have an incentive to produce less wasteful, more easily recyclable packaging. Read more about this bill here, on our factsheet.
We hope you can join us on Wednesday! Click here to let us know if you will make it.
See you there!
-Beth
P.S. Can't make it to Augusta on Wednesday? You can submit public testimony in support of the bill prior to the hearing. Here's how to do it:
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Visit the Maine State Legislature Testimony Submission Form
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Select "Environment and Natural Resources" from the dropdown menu
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Select "February 26th 10am" from the second dropdown menu that appears
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Click the bill that you'd like to submit testimony for " LD 2104 - An Act To Support and Increase the Recycling of Packaging"
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Fill out necessary fields
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Submit!
