Testimony in support of SB 2689 (Hancock) to promote recycling

Testimony by Environment Texas Executive Director Luke Metzger on April 16, 2025 before the Senate Natural Resources committee in support of SB 2689

Good morning Chairman and Members. My name is Luke Metzger. I am the Executive Director of Environment Texas. We’re a nonprofit advocate for clean air and water and parks and wildlife in support of the bill. Our society is producing and wasting more stuff than ever. In the last 6 years we used as much resources on this planet as we did in the entire 20th century. And most of that—or a lot of that—is going to waste and we’re losing those resources forever. 40 million tons here in Texas go into landfills and that causes significant environmental problems from the methane that’s leaking, potential groundwater contamination, nuisance to neighbors. A lot of our waste also ends up as litter,  on our beaches, in our rivers, in our parks. So we need to reduce; we need to reuse; and ultimately we need to recycle.

Unfortunately, we don’t do a great job of it here in Texas; we only recycle about 23% of our waste here in the state—12 points lower than the national average. And part of that is just because a lot of people don’t have access to recycling services. 36% of households in Texas don’t have access. And that’s 80% of multifamily properties don’t have recycling services. And then only 58% of Texans who do have access actually participate in recycling. And even if they do participate, a lot of those municipal recycling programs don’t recycle a lot of products that could be recycled.

So we have a lot of room to grow, and I think this bill does a great job of encouraging more participation, helping rural areas that may not have the ability to offer recycling to do so. And I think one thing I’ll wrap up with is we have to remember that a lot of products, including a lot of single-use plastic products, aren’t recyclable. The answer is not to incinerate them and turn them into fuel like some are proposing. There is a lot of opportunity to expand traditional mechanical recycling programs. And then finally we also just do need to remember that reducing and reusing are critical parts of kind of a circular economy approach. Thank you.