(a) Commissioner means the Commissioner of Environmental Conservation or a duly designated representative.

(b) Emblem or recycling emblem or official emblem means a symbol described in section 368.3 of this Part.

(c) Material means the elements, constituents, or substances of which something is composed or can be made.

(d) Material category means that which can be collected, marketed and utilized in the aggregate as a secondary material feedstock.

(e) Package or packaging means a container, vessel, covering, wrapping, box or device in which a material or product is protected, stored, treated, handled or transported.

(f) Person means any individual, public or private corporation, political subdivision, government agency or subdivision thereof, authority, municipality, industry, co-partnership, association, firm, trust, estate or any other legal entity whatsoever.

(g) Post-consumer material means only those products, packages or materials generated by a business or consumer which have served their intended end use as consumer items, and which have been separated or diverted from the waste stream for the purposes of collection, and recycling as a secondary material feedstock, but shall not include waste material generated during or after the completion of a manufacturing or converting process.

(h) Pre-consumer material means material and by-products which have not reached a business or consumer for an intended end use and have been recovered or diverted from the waste stream, including but not limited to industrial scrap material, overstock or obsolete inventories from distributors, wholesalers and other companies but such term does not include those materials and by-products generated from, and commonly reused within, an original manufacturing process or on-site converting waste. On-site converting waste can be claimed as recycled material if the manufacturer or advertiser can substantiate that the material would otherwise have entered the solid waste stream.

(i) Product means that which is created as a result of a manufacturing or printing process. For the purposes of this Part, packages are excluded from this definition.

(j) Recovered paper material means paper waste generated after the completion of a papermaking process or cotton waste, such as post-consumer materials, envelope cuttings, bindery trimmings, printing waste, cutting and other converting waste, butt rolls and mill wrappers, obsolete inventories and rejected unused stock. Recovered paper material, however, shall not include on-site converting waste, fibrous waste generated during the manufacturing process such as fibers recovered from wastewater or trimmings of paper machine rolls (mill broke) regardless of whether such materials are used by the same or another company, and shall also not include fibrous by-products of harvesting, extractive or woodcutting processes or forest residues such as bark. On-site converting waste can be claimed as recycled material if the manufacturer or advertiser can substantiate that the material would otherwise have entered the solid waste stream.

(k) Recyclable means a material for which any of the following standards are met:

(l) Recycled means a package or product containing a specified minimum percentage by weight of post-consumer material as described in section 368.4(a) of this Part and shown in Table 1. The unqualified use of the word "recycled" as an independent term represents that the package or product contains 100 percent recycled material content. The use of the New York State Recycled Emblem, absent a pre-consumer content qualification, represents that the package or product contains 100 percent recycled material content. If a package or product contains less than 100 percent recycled material content, the percentage of total recycled material content or both the pre-consumer and post-consumer recycled content must be displayed with the term or emblem. The percentage of post-consumer material content shall be that portion of a package or product weight that is composed of post-consumer material as demonstrated by an annual mass balance of all feedstocks and outputs of the manufacturing process. The weight of post-consumer material use in any month shall be no less than 80 percent of the average monthly post-consumer material usage during the corresponding calendar year. The percentage of recycled content for paper and paper products is based on fiber weight; for all other materials, it is based on total weight.

(m) Recycling rate means the percentage by weight of a given material category sold or distributed for sale in the State that would otherwise be destined for the waste stream, including post-consumer and pre-consumer materials, that is collected or otherwise returned for processing or refabrication into marketable end products other than fuel for producing heat or power by combustion.

(n) Reusable means that the original package or product can be returned for refilling or reuse a minimum of five times as demonstrated by an annual accounting in a program established by a manufacturer, distributor or retailer for refilling or reuse of the manufactured product or package.

(o) Secondary material or recovered material means any combination of pre-consumer material and post-consumer material but such term does not include those materials and by-products generated from, and commonly reused within, an original manufacturing process. For paper and paper products, secondary material shall mean recovered paper material.

(p) Term(s) as used in this Part means the words "recycled", "recyclable", or "reusable" when used independent of the emblem.