Sanitation White Paper — Christopher Marte for City Council

NO TIME TO WASTE: A PLAN TO CLEAN UP OUR DISTRICT, OUR CITY, AND OUR PLANET

THE PROBLEM

New York City’s failing recycling program has led to an expensive regime of exporting garbage to methane-producing landfills and toxin-emitting incinerators that produce 1.7 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year. Despite the Mayor’s promises to the contrary (1), this problem has only increased in the past eight years. Moreover, one-third of this waste is organic so it doesn’t even belong in a landfill while almost all of the waste is hauled by private companies notorious for violating labor and traffic laws.

NYC’s current waste management is a crisis of mega proportions, affecting the budget, labor standards, pollution, and environmental racism. Our planet can’t wait for the next generation to be encouraged to recycle more. We need to take aggressive action in banning waste that corporations push onto consumers. We need to supplement these bans with robust systems that let individuals contribute to reducing our massive carbon footprint while not letting corporations off the hook.

The challenges to waste management are greater than ever due to COVID-19 but there is reason for optimism. For instance, the FY 2021 Budget has cut over $100 million from the Department of Sanitation and thus decimated waste reduction and recycling efforts across the city (2). Yet New Yorkers have reason to hope because there are other big cities that have led the way. Seattle and San Francisco have triple the recycling rate of New York while, on an individual level, New Yorkers’ residential recycling rate stands at 18% and commercial at 24%. However, if the City’s waste was properly sorted and recycled, 68% of residential and 75% of commercial trash would be diverted from landfills and incinerators (3).

The City’s lack of strategy towards effectively addressing waste management results in a compromised standard of living for New Yorkers, health problems for those living next to dumping sites of New York’s garbage, and a significant contribution to the world’s climate crisis.

The Marte Campaign cites five actions necessary for better waste practice in New York City:

Shift from incentivizing individuals’ habits to punishing corporations who profit from pollution
Support community composting efforts with organizations like GrowNYC and the Lower East Side Ecology Center
Work with NYCHA to advocate for a better community-based waste management system
Strengthen existing and develop new commercial and construction waste initiatives
Change the priorities of private waste haulers

THE SOLUTIONS

Legislate private entities in District 1 to adopt new programs that will prioritize sustainability over waste. Marte believes the City needs to shift from incentivizing individuals’ habits to punishing corporations who profit from pollution. Fossil fuel companies, which financially depend on the production of plastic, have had to develop new strategies to evade environmental regulations as governments have limited consumption of plastic. One of their key tactics is to use state laws to preempt municipal, or city-level, legislation. Corporations find it easier to target the largest legislature in the state, than to have to fight city-by-city battles (4).
While New York City has had moderate, if turbulent, success in restricting plastic bags, we have a long way to go if we want to truly reduce the devastating environmental and economic impact that all waste, but especially plastic waste, has on our City and our planet. Our City and State must work together to not only push back against the fossil fuel lobby, but to expand home-rule so that our City has greater power to reduce its own carbon footprint.
Businesses and restaurants must be financially incentivized to reduce, recycle, and compost their waste. Private waste hauling companies should be mandated to implement a multi-tier pricing model in which trash pickup is set at a high price while recycling and compost pickup is priced significantly lower. This will motivate storefronts to separate recyclables and compostables from landfill-bound garbage as well as reduce their waste output overall. These pricing models are the norm in cities such as Seattle for residents and businesses alike (5) and would be essential in beginning to establish a new standard for recycling and composting in New York City.
Support Community Composting Efforts with organizations like GrowNYC and the Lower East Side Ecology Center. If the City is to address the waste problems effectively it must, at the very minimum, be able to live up to the promises it made residents. Mayor de Blasio has broken his promise to create a mandatory city-wide composting system (6), and more recently suspended the curbside compost pickup program. Marte firmly believes it is paramount that we bring back funding for curbside pickup and make its services known to all residents of District 1.
Furthermore, Marte will work with local organizations such as the Lower East Side Ecology Center to find ways to make District 1 the most waste efficient District in Manhattan. Though the LESEC technically operates in District 2, it is essential that we ensure the Lower East Side Ecology Center’s Community Compost Program be operational through 2023 (7) until construction of the East Side Coastal Resiliency project begins. Now is not the time to interrupt their invaluable work.
Work with New York City Housing Authority to Advocate for a Better Community-Based Waste Management System. Our district is home to 8 NYCHA complexes, and yet the City excluded all public housing residents from it’s Zero-Waste by 2030 Plan (8). As we continue to fight to fully fund NYCHA, Marte will use discretionary funds to begin to tackle the waste issues that affect the daily lives of residents.
In partnership with the Resident Associations and community organizations like the Lower East Side Ecology Center, Marte will not just provide more recycling and waste receptacles, but create opportunities for residents to spearhead grassroots campaigns to educate and take control of how residents and NYCHA manage waste.
NYCHA’s involvement in waste and recycling efforts can also be increased through the expansion of in-sink food waste disposals, which divert food waste from landfill-bound trash (9). Finally, we need to expand the types of materials recycled at NYCHA sites, separating packing materials such as cardboard boxes from bulk-waste items such as furniture (10).
Strengthen Existing and Develop New Commercial and Construction Waste Initiatives. Every New Yorker is familiar with the scourge of garbage bags on our public sidewalks. We must transition from the Clean Curbs pilot program to a citywide implementation to give commercial spaces the opportunity to receive on-street containers for trash and recycling storage. This will remove unsightly garbage bags from piling up on our sidewalks (11). Additionally, in a district with almost constant construction (12), we must require that bulky construction materials, which are a massive waste stream, are broken down and recycled (13).
- In pandemic times, with Sanitation pick-up slowed and waste production from commercial entities at a low, we should build partnerships between local businesses and larger office buildings that have containerized collection. We will likely see more commercial-to-residential conversion in the coming years, and so have the potential to expand this effective method of keeping trash off of the streets and reducing rats.
Change the Priorities of Private Waste Haulers. Haulers are currently paid for the amount of waste they collect, which means the more waste there is, so much the better for waste haulers. However, this scheme is not working for District 1 or the people of New York. Waste Haulers should be incentivized to reduce the tons they dispose of. Marte will advocate for adopting a scheme which enforces penalties for haulers’ not meeting waste-reduction targets while rewarding haulers who exceed these targets (14). These targets can be met if we connect waste haulers with food recovery organizations and restaurants in District 1 (15).
- Trucks from private waste hauling companies travel 23 million miles per year picking up trash throughout the city, often in uncoordinated and overlapping routes with rival competitors. This contributes to traffic clogs, burning 3.5 million gallons of diesel fuel and polluting the air in our neighborhoods. The next City Council and the incoming Mayor should continue the implementation of the landmark Commercial Waste Zones bill (Intro 1574-A) signed into law in 2019 (16). This landmark legislation splits the city into “waste zones” and limits the number of private hauling companies to service each zone, potentially reducing total miles traveled by 49-68 percent (17). This creates a safer, more fuel-efficient waste collection system in line with the city’s Green New Deal goals.
  Unfortunately, implementation of Commercial Waste Zones has temporarily halted due to the Covid-19 crisis. Marte will renew the City’s commitment to reforming the waste hauling system as soon as possible.

CONCLUSION

The world is dealing with a climate crisis that poses an existential threat to life as we’ve known it—New York is at the center of this crisis. The City needs to realize that it can’t afford to ignore the problem any longer, nor can it simply export our problem to our neighbors. We need solutions that will allow for a future of waste responsibility.