Familiar battle lines have been drawn between industry groups and environmentalists over a bill that aims to curb plastic packaging.

The bill would allow for a fee to be charged to most companies that use plastic packaging and create a new office in the Department of Environmental Protection dedicated to managing plastic. It would exempt companies earning less than $5 million in gross annual revenue, public entities and nonprofits. It would also require companies to create and implement plans to use less plastic in packaging.

The bill, which is sponsored by Sen. Bob Smith (D-Middlesex) who chairs the Senate Environment and Energy Committee, failed to pass in 2023.

“They are putting their profits over our health and over our environment, and we have been subsidizing those profits,” said Peter Blair of Just Zero during a news conference Wednesday. “It’s time we turn the tables on them.”

“It is time to update the mantra of reduce, reuse and recycle,” said Doug O’Malley, director of Environment New Jersey. “Our waterways and our bodies are literally swimming in plastics, and we can’t recycle our way out of this crisis.”

Industry leaders have criticized the bill for being overly vague and overly onerous, and said that increased costs will be passed onto consumers.

“A similar bill in New York — they had an independent study done, and under that independent study, it would have cost the consumer, a family, $700 additionally a year,” said Ed Waters of the Chemistry Council of New Jersey. “The alternatives to some of the packaging products are more expensive than the current packaging products that we’re using.”

“We’re overlaying a 40-year system of recycling in New Jersey, and the bill is really not clear how that’s going to work,” said Ray Cantor of the New Jersey Business & Industry Association.

The Senate Environment and Energy Committee is expected to vote on the bill on Thursday.