Garbage created by New Yorkers impacts our lives and our environment. This waste has become such a problem that New York City has demanded its citzen recycle. Waste generated by residential, commercial and institutional sources must be recycled. Which includes plastic, glass, paper, metals to name a few. When the rules of recycling are not followed there will be a fine. Do we know if recycling works?If you are a New Yorker and sort your recycling at home, as city law mandates, you probably wonder, as you rinse bottles and stack junk mail and scrub yogurt containers: Does all this effort make a difference?
New York City recycles only about a fifth of garbage collected from its citizens, 18 percent of trash from homes and 25 percent from businesses according to the city’s Department of Sanitation. When Bloomberg was our Mayor he vowed to double the effort of improving the residential recycling rate percent by 2017
This promise has fallen short. If this promise had been kept or followed through, everything collected, sorted and recycled. An estimate of all New Yorker’s garbage, 68 percent residential trash and 75 percent of commercial trash, would be kept out of landfills, according to the Sanitation Department. City leaders have promised to improve recycling for decades while they dragged their feet in doing so, New York still lags behind major cities. Many of these cities recycle more than half of their waste. The numbers obtained have shown over decades from cities like Seattle and San Francisco, whose policies include much stronger requirements than New York’s.
The effects of not recycling is that the garbage must be trucked out of the city, and organic waste left to decompose is contributing to the planet warming problem by releasing methane gas into the air . This undermines the city and state implemented law last year to reduce contributions to climate change.
“ New York has to get serious about solving the solid waste crisis,” said Peter Iwanowicz, executive director of Environmental Advocates of New York. “Otherwise it’s going to impact our ability to hit our climate goals.” How does New York City, a leader on environment and climate change, who promotes zero-waste campaign plans to stop exports of garbage by 2030 fall short on this promise ? One reason for this failure as per Mayor Adams “While the Trump administration fails to fight climate change”, His administration plans for New York City is
“taking bold action to divest from fossil fuels”. As per Chief Climate Policy advisor ( posted on twitter)
A third of residential waste is food scraps and yard garbage, all organic materials that can be composted and turned into fertilizers, which can be used to produce energy. The city’s sanitation commissioner, Kathryn Garcia, has been proposing composting as a way to reduce waste.
But a composting program that the Bloomberg administration began in 2013 appears to have stalled, according to Politico, whose recent investigation of New York’s recycling program concluded that the city is not meeting the recycling goals set by the de Blasio and Bloomberg administrations.
Mayor Bill de Blasio promised in his first term to make the composting program citywide by 2018, but has since put funding on hold as per the New York Times
Many neighborhoods do not even have the option to get city composting bins, and only the largest restaurants are required to separate food scraps.A big reason for the problem, experts say, is money. Recycling paper and glass can be profitable for the city, depending on markets, but so far composting costs far more than it can earn.As per the New York City sanitation website “New York City is on track to have one of the nation’s more widespread commercial organics diversion mandates in the latest sign of ambitious local policy to boost this growing sector”
The city’s Department of Sanitation (DSNY) proposed a new rule that would expand its existing requirements for the third time to cover approximately 8,000 new businesses and 100,000 tons of annual food waste. In a release marking the announcement, Commissioner Kathryn Garcia described this as the “final phase” of a 2013 law targeting commercial organics in the waste stream.”
In 1989 separating garbage was required by all residents but politicians have not been consistent in New York City about following through. Cities with better recycling rates tend to have tougher mandates and enforcement than in New York. Many European cities, residents must pay for every bag of trash and recyclables collected, as a result their residents sort their garbage and reuse more.
Seattle for instance recycling is collected for free, but there is a fee for each bag of regular garbage. This is called “pay as you throw” or “save as you throw,” garbage collection is an “unmetered utility,”. Corey Johnson, the City Council speaker, has called such a requirement a “nonstarter.” For now, fines for failing to recycle are charged to property owners, but most New Yorkers rent their homes. In any case, the fine charged to landlords is $25 per violation and can move up to $100, and recycling advocates say inspections are inadequate.
As per the New York Times Article “China, in recent years, has tightened its standards for buying recycled materials, creating a disincentive for waste collectors to sort paper and cardboard. According to Ms. Garcia, the sanitation commissioner, New York has been relatively insulated from the market swings because half of its residential paper and cardboard waste goes to a paper mill on Staten Island. The mill recycles the materials locally, making the city less dependent on selling them overseas”.“But Mr. Campbell, the Teamsters president, said commercial garbage collectors are less likely to separate cardboard from trash when the market is low.”“When the market is high,” he said, “you’ll see scavengers driving around in pickup trucks, picking up cardboard to sell. By the time the garbage trucks come, it’s gone.”
As a New Yorker I will say this, internet shopping has become increasingly convenient and they have been an increase in people who buys in bulk, this creates a greater need to recycle our waste to keep the waste we are creating out of the landfills, recycling is a must.
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