Conrad Cutler drives a Porsche Macan, which seems fitting considering the 26-year-old entrepreneur has made his money one can鈥攁nd bottle鈥攁t a time.
Less than five years out of college, Cutler runs Galvanize Group, a four-year-old business that generates almost $10 million in annual revenue from collecting recyclable cans and bottles around the city and returning them to the distributors, who pay the 5-cent deposit plus a state-mandated 3.5-cent handling fee for each one. In the winter about 1 million empty containers of Coke, Poland Spring and other beverages consumed in the city are sorted weekly by about 35 full-time employees at his Mount Vernon warehouse. Volume doubles during the warmer months, when New Yorkers tend to consume more cold drinks, so he keeps his shop open 24 hours in the summer. 鈥淢y friends make fun of me, saying I go through people鈥檚 garbage for a living,鈥� said Cutler, whose company processes about 110 million empty bottles and cans every year.
Cutler鈥檚 pals may mock him, but to city officials, his bustling business is no laughing matter. In their eyes he and the collectors who supply him are undermining the municipal recycling program by seizing the most valuable items before the city can pick them up and resell them as a commodity. Metal, glass and plastic collected by sanitation department crews are routed to a private company called Sims Municipal Recycling, which has a multiyear agreement with the city to process recyclables at a Brooklyn facility.
In a trade publication in 2012, Robert Lange, a former head of the city鈥檚 Bureau of Waste Prevention, Reuse and Recycling, labeled outfits like Cutler鈥檚 a 鈥渟ophisticated mob of scavenger collectives that systemically removes valuable recyclables鈥nd leaves the worthless and costly-to-collect rest for the Department of Sanitation.鈥�
A less harsh critic, Wayne DeFeo, an industry expert and founder of consulting firm DeFeo Associates, said Cutler operates in an 鈥渆thical gray zone.鈥�
The controversy rests on how Cutler goes about gathering his millions of bottles and cans. Some come from large retail outlets, such as CVS stores. Most, however, are sourced via a network of 100 subcontractors who have relationships with apartment supers and property managers and give Cutler鈥檚 crews first dibs on recyclables before they鈥檙e hauled to the curb. (It鈥檚 illegal to rummage through recyclables once they鈥檙e curbside, but it鈥檚 impossible for Cutler to police that.)
Bars and restaurants are less important sources, as those establishments seldom generate more than a few hundred empties per day. The largest volume comes from office buildings. 鈥淎 big tower will have thousands of people working in it and consuming two or three bottled beverages every day,鈥� said Cutler, adding that a dedicated collector can bank up to $200 a day, which translates to 4,000 bottles or cans daily.
Plus, Cutler said, his firm helps make the city cleaner by picking up recyclables that might otherwise litter the streets. Such litter remains common even though the state has imposed a refundable nickel deposit on every bottle and can of soda or beer since 1982. (Plastic noncarbonated beverage bottles were added to the mix eight years ago.)
But according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, deposits went uncollected on 34% of returnables, or about 2 billion containers, last year. That return rate has held steady over time, and Cutler said both the state and beverage distributors have a vested interest in keeping it down. To understand why, it helps to know how New York鈥檚 recycling economy works.
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