New York seeks to double waste recycling by 2017
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New York seeks to double waste recycling by 2017
More than 40,000 tons of waste a day, 7,000 employees and a fleet of more than 2,500 trucks: New York faces an uphill task in trashing its garbage and doubling recycling by 2017.
It is the US city that generates the most garbage: a dizzying 2.5 kilograms per person per day compared to 2kg in the rest of the country, according to the office of Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“Sanitation is the most important uniformed force on the street,” writes Robin Nagle, anthropologist at New York University in her book “Picking Up.” “If sanitation workers aren’t there, the city becomes unlivable, fast.”
But New York, in so many other respects a municipal policy trailblazer for the United States, lags woefully behind its West Coast and European rivals on the issue of recycling.
Ron Gonen, New York recycling czar, says the amount of waste rises each year and that the city spends US$330 million on trucking off its refuse to places like Ohio or North Carolina.
But in the last two years the city of 8.4 million, where businesses organize their own separate waste collection, has made serious if belated efforts to improve recycling.
Of the 11,200 tons of daily rubbish collected by the city, it is committed to increasing the rate of recycling from 15 to 30 percent by 2017, organic waste not included.
Private companies discard another 29,000 tons a day.
The city has partnered with private investors to build a brand-new, state-of-the-art recycling plant in Brooklyn.
The city has extended a pilot program to collect organic waste from 300 schools this year, up from 90 in the last.
From July 2015 restaurants, delis and grocers will also have to separate out organic waste and recycling.
“In the last two years there was phenomenal dedication. There is a lot of potential,” Gonen said.
Eric Goldstein, an expert from the Natural Resources Defense Council also working with the city, agrees.
“We are in an early stage of transformation,” he said. “We had a slow start, we are still not one of the leading cities, as Seattle or San Francisco. But we are catching up quickly by good steps forward.”
In December, an ultra-modern recycling plant for metals, glass and plastics opened in Brooklyn.
It took 10 years and US$110 million from private and state investors to build the 44,515- square-meter Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility along the East River.
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