New Yorkers make a lot of garbage. We create more than 44 million pounds of residential and commercial waste every day鈥揳bout a ton per person annually. Of that, only a third is recycled, composted or burned to generate energy. The rest is dumped in landfills. A recent Crain鈥檚 article explains how Mayor Bill de Blasio hopes to make a serious dent in all that dumping. He has pledged that by 2030, the city would be sending 鈥渮ero waste鈥� to landfills: 鈥淭his is the way of the future if we鈥檙e going to save our Earth.鈥� But like most things, the success of any plans to reduce the rubbish pile hinges on two things: management, and incentive (which, for most New Yorkers, means money).
New York City has the largest curbside recycling program in North America, but the 500,000 tons of recyclable material collected here every year is but a drop in the bucket: 27 years after the city began its recycling program, only 16 percent of residential waste gets recycled. Half the recyclable waste goes into landfills.
That number for businesses averages around 19 percent. Business waste is collected by private sector haulers who self-report their data, so it鈥檚 harder to nail down the breakdown. Either way, if the people don鈥檛 participate, there鈥檚 nothing to recycle. Department of Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia says New Yorkers don鈥檛 have many incentives to waste less, and it鈥檚 often easier to bundle everything in black bags instead of those colored bins in the hallway. 鈥淯nless it鈥檚 convenient, people won鈥檛 do it,鈥� she said. And it seems we鈥檙e more likely to analyze our trash or make art and fashion with it than dispose of it properly.
Other cities, (like San Francisco and Seattle) charge, sometimes after one bin or more, to collect trash, while recycling pickup is free. Not so in NYC, where the whole operation is paid for using tax revenue. According to Ms. Garcia, financial incentive could change that equation:鈥淲hen something costs you money, you pay more attention,鈥� citing how much water usage dropped when the city no longer charged flat rates for water and installed meters. There鈥檚 also the issue of New York City鈥檚 high concentration of apartment buildings鈥搈ore than any other U.S. city鈥搘hich makes it difficult to provide incentives to 鈥減enalize and reward individual behavior.鈥�
One frequently lamented reason it鈥檚 so much more difficult for New Yorkers to recycle is the lack of single-stream recycling. It鈥檚 harder for people to separate recyclables into separate bins. Single-stream recycling would also make things easier for the sanitation department, which could use only one truck per route instead of two. The city aims to address this by 2020.
To read the full story, visit .