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“Plastics. There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?”

That’s what Walter Brooke tells Dustin Hoffman in the 1967 film “The Graduate.” These lines are listed as No. 42 of the 100 top movie quotes by the American Film Institute.

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Prophetic lines for sure, and chilling. The future of plastics, in its many forms, has proved to be undeniably great, as in colossal and pervasive, but not necessarily always great as in terrific.

For all of its positives that help shape modern life, there’s also the unwanted, unasked-for gargantuan amounts of plastic packaging waste those profiting from it inflict on us — 30% of the state’s waste stream.

It’s glutting our landfills and poisoning our oceans, and you and I are paying to get rid of it. Not the companies making the plastics or the manufacturers imposing them on consumers. They get a free ride and high profits. We get the ever-increasing bill for managing waste that shouldn’t even exist.

What we need and haven’t had is accountability from industry and business for the harm they’ve done and continue to do. We have a history in New York of “polluter pays.” A far gentler version but in the same spirit are what are called EPR laws, "extended producer........

© Times Union