What Happened to Recycling in NYC?

Curbside collection of glass and plastic recyclables was suspended in of July 1, 2002. Weekly curbside collection of glass and plastic recyclables was restored as of April 1, 2004.

Recycle This formed in 2002 in response to Mayor Bloomberg’s recycling cuts, which caused New York City, the garbage capital of the country, to producing even more waste--most of which gets carted off to poor communities in other states. Other cities manage to profit from recycling, and so can we. We must envision the kind of city we want to live in, and work to make it a reality. If recycling isn't working for our economy, we must fix the program, not scrap it.

Please visit How to Recycle in NYC to find out how YOU can make difference!

New York’s Waste

  • The average New Yorker throws away 4.5 pounds of trash per day
  • New York is the top waste exporting state at 4.2 million tons a year
  • NYC disposes of 24 million pounds of household trash each day , which costs about $65/ton to send to out-of-state landfills and incinerators.
  • NYC trash is now trucked out of state to landfills in upstate NY, PA, OH, and VA.
  • Most of Manhattan's residential trash is now burned in a waste-to-energy incinerator in Newark, NJ.
  • In 2006, the New York City Council passed a new Soild Waste Management Plan (SWaMP) that provided for the re-opening of several marine transfer stations around the city to load residential trash onto containers for export. This contentious 20-year plan aims to reduce garbage truck traffic (an estimated 3 million truck miles per year), especially in low-income communities where diesel exhaust and other pollutants contribute to some of the highest asthma rates in the nation. The plan also creates an Office of Recycling separate from the Department of Sanitation. However, the plan does not call for any concrete changes in the way commercial waste is handled, nor does it call for any clearly defined targets for waste prevention, diversion and/or recycling. The plan awaits approval of the State Legislature.

NYC vs. Other Cities

  • After passing Ordinance 171067 in 1997, the City Council of Portland, Oregon announced that it had met its goal to recover 54% of residential and commercial waste in 2000. The city, however, failed to meet it's goal of 60% waste recovery in 2005. As a result, the Council adopted a non-binding resolution in June 2006 with a new goal of 75% waste diversion/recovery by 2015. To reach this goal, they proffered a new strategy based on eliminating waste "before...resources enter the solid waste system. Instead of focusing on avoided disposal, waste prevention in all phases of prduction and consumption should be the prevailing management strategy."

To achieve its goals, the city’s recycling division develops and manages waste reduction, re-use and recycling programs. These programs help to divert useable and valuable materials from landfills and provide material for the region's growing recycling industry.

  • San Francisco, in stark contrast with New York City, voted in September 2002 to adopt a zero waste goal (diverting all waste from the landfill). The city is diverting almost half of its waste from the landfill, has committed to continue on to zero waste, has implemented residential and business food scraps collection and is passing producer responsibility resolutions that address the root problem of waste.

San Francisco currently recycles about 49 percent of its waste, and will reach the 50 percent mark later this year or next year. It has also set an aggressive goal to divert 75 percent of the city’s discards from the landfill by 2010.

  • New York City took a big step backwards in suspending recycling. Curbside recycling is back, but with waste disposal costs for NYC now topping $1billion the city is still focusing on how to deal with exporting 13,000 tons og waste each day, rather than on how to recycle more and waste less.

To be fair, recycling hasn’t been around that long in NYC.

Brief History of Recycling in NYC

  • Throughout the 1880’s, 75% of NYC’s waste was dumped into the Atlantic Ocean. In 1895, ocean dumping ended and a waste management plan was introduced that mandated recycling.
  • WWI brought an end to recycling in 1918, due to labor and materials shortages, and the reinstatement of ocean dumping. Over the next 20 years the city built and operated 22 incinerators and 89 landfills. Today we have no incinerators and no landfills.
  • Recycling began in NYC as a voluntary program in 1986, and became mandatory in July 1989 with the passage of local law 19. It wasn’t until 1999 that weekly recycling collection was implemented in all 59 districts of the City.

What happened to glass and plastic recycling?

  • In February 2002, shortly after taking office, Mayor Bloomberg announced plans to cut glass, plastic, paper and metal recycling as a way to bring the city out of its $3.8 billion dollar budget deficit.
  • Due to public opposition the City Council worked with the mayor to save metal and paper recycling.
  • Recycling of glass and plastic collection was suspended beginning in July 2002. Plastic recycling returned in July 2003 and glass recycling resumed in April 2004.

Was the suspension of glass and plastic recycling a good idea?

  • The Department of Sanitation Fiscal Year 2001 budget had artificially inflated the cost of recycling by not accounting for the revenue from the sale of material. New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. calculated that a more accurate reflection of the cost of recycling contracts would lower the cost of this program from the DOS' $126/ton estimate to $82/ton, resulting in a net savings to the city of $3.4 million.
  • In 2003, the sanitation department's budget topped $1 billion for the first time--up from $631 million. Almost all of the new cost is linked to trucking waste out of town.
  • NYC anticipated a savings of $51.4 million if recycling was cut. The savings estimate dropped to just under $40 million (a mere one percent of the budget deficit) with the retention of paper and metal recycling.
  • NYC Comptroller William C. Thompson estimated that operating a full-scale recycling program meeting diversion rates achieved in FY 2002 would save the City $16.7 million per year.

Did the cuts work according to plan?
The actual savings from cutting the glass and plastic recycling programs have been chipped away by increased costs elsewhere by seemingly unanticipated resulting problems.

  • The city saved only $2.6 million by reducing the number of recycling trucks (less than 2% of total truck shifts).
  • Comparing the number of weekly metal recycling truck shifts and refuse truck shifts, DOS actually had a net INCREASE of 47 weekly collection truck shifts, increasing DOS’ costs by about $1.4 million.
  • Once the cost of hauling away the larger regular garbage collections was taken into account, the city's savings amounted to perhaps only $10 million, not the $50 million the department projected last year.
  • In a February 7, 2003 letter to the DOS Commissioner, NYC Comptroller William Thompson requested a full reinstatement of the recycling program, finding no logical reason to continue the cuts.

New York Needs a Solid Waste Management Plan!

  • The Solid Waste Management Act of 1988 actually makes landfilling the least desirable of 4 waste management practices, after reduction, reuse and recycling. But our present system depends on exporting waste to landfills in other states, as well as to upstate NY. There is no focus on reuse, manufacturing or recycling.
  • In 1996, when the city was preparing to close the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island, a 1996 Fresh Kills task force report noted that an increase in recycling and a reduction in the waste stream would be part of the city's effort to close the landfill.
  • The city is now spending nearly 50% more to export its trash rather than dump it at Fresh Kills: $63 for each ton compared to $43 a ton.
  • This plan leaves NYC vulnerable to increased landfill tipping fees, particularly now since four companies control 85% of the waste industry.
  • Our current waste management practices are a major threat to our ailing economy. Landfill fees have increased 300% on average nationally from 1986-1996, and they are expected to increase 7% per year in the future. This estimate was made in 1997, BEFORE the waste industry consolidation
  • If NYC doesn’t regulate its waste production, other states will by creating laws that force us to reduce our waste with recycling and other methods before we can export our garbage to their state, or they’ll simply charge us more.
  • Our policy of waste exporting is bad diplomacy. Former Mayor Giuliani boiled the blood of other state leaders with this remark: "People in Virginia like to utilize New York because it is a culture center and business center. What goes along with being a business center is that we're very crowded, and we don't have room to handle the garbage ... so this is a reciprocal relationship." Our city is not well endowed with open space, it would be wise to maintain good relations with other states and at least attempt to manage our waste!
  • More than going against established city policies, the recycling cuts have undone years and millions of dollars worth of education and habit-forming that occurred over the years. In fact, there was a 12 percent decline in paper recycling rates found following the cuts to glass and plastic recycling. NYC Comptroller William Thompson attributed this to an overall public confusion about the status of the recycling program. Thompson estimated that if residents contuniued to recycle 12 percent fewer tons of paper for the rest of the fiscal year following the cuts it would cost the city approximately $3.4 million in lost income and increased disposal expenses.

Recycling and the NYC Economy

  • Recycling is an important part of our state’s and city’s economy. New York State is home to 4,257 recycling and reuse establishments (recyclable collection, materials processing, recyclable material wholesalers, recycled paper mills, recycled steel mills) that employ 43,614 people, and generate over $9 billion in annual revenues .
  • According to Laborers Local 108, which represents workers at recycling and garbage transfer stations throughout the city, three recycling facilities were shut down shortly after the cuts and 202 people lost their jobs.

Recycling's Future in NYC

  • NYC has signed a 20-year contract with the Hugo Neu Corporation to recycle our glass, metal, plastic and eventually paper. This deal is expected to reduce the cost of recycling.
  • The Solid Waste Management Plan for NYC over the next 20 years is still being debated. To read the draft plan, click here.

What can we do?
The recycling cuts have given New York City an opportunity to recognize that we have a fundamental problem of too much waste, made worse by bad policy.

In order to achieve real progress we must also work to reduce our over all consumption and live more sustainably.

Below are some ideas that have been proposed for NYC. What can YOU do? Support these measures, visit our Take Action page for more specific actions, and visit How to Recycle in NYC for ideas on how you can reduce your own waste.

Some Ideas for Sustainable Solutions

  • The city can breathe new life into the recycling industry by using recycled materials in city construction projects. There is a technology that makes high-quality lumber out of plastic bottles. At one time the city was using crushed glass for asphalt, which helped keep glass recycling viable. The city also at one time killed a potential recycling economy by rejecting a contract from a small local business that made traffic cones out of recycled plastic. There is a ton of potential for improvement.
  • We need a bigger, better bottle bill. Currently, unredeemed nickel deposits on carbonated beverages sold in NYC account for between $26.9 million to $55.6 million annually, all of which is kept by bottlers or distributors. There is a citywide effort to introduce a new bottle bill that will include non-carbonated beverages, make sure the city collects the deposits, and possibly increase the deposit to 10 cents.