Regression in NYC's Recycling?

Here's just another example of how much we actually throw out. This article published in The New York Times on October 21st takes a close look at what nearby New York City is doing to recycle, especially when it comes to take-out containers. The landfills are littered with plastic domes and styrofoam clamshells. In fact, their recycling score card has dropped significantly. In 2001, the city had a recycling rate of 23%. It now has a paltry 15%.

When it really comes down to it, we could all do a little better. There's always room for improvement. See the excerpt below.

Lunch, Landfills and What I Tossed
By MIREYA NAVARRO
Published: October 21, 2011

As any befuddled, frustrated and guilt-ridden environmentally conscious New Yorker knows, takeout food and its containers — salad bar and deli clamshells; plastic cups and utensils; yogurt containers; fancy three-compartment bento boxes — are the bane of this city’s would-be recyclers.  They might reuse plastic shopping bags until they rip and religiously bundle every newspaper and magazine for recycling pickup, only to be undone by lunch.

 “There’s nothing I can do,” said Doug Richardson, 25, an accountant eating a chicken salad from a deep plastic bowl. “It annoys me. It’s plastic in a landfill.”
 
Environmental advocates call recycling the weak link in the city’s green agenda, even after legislation was passed last year to overhaul the 1989 recycling law that made New York a 20th-century leader, not a laggard.
 
How far behind is the city? A survey by the Natural Resources Defense Council this year found that more than two dozen large and medium-size cities in the United States recycle all kinds of plastic containers, while New York takes only bottles and jugs. Another study this year, sponsored by Siemens AG, the global electronics and electrical engineering company, ranked New York 16th among 27 cities in its handling of waste, though it was third in overall environmental performance.

By now, other cities require recyclable or compostable takeout containers and utensils at restaurants — and bins in which to dispose of them. Cutting-edge green cities, like San Francisco, offer curbside collection of food scraps and compostable items at homes, restaurants and offices. And dozens of places now charge residents for their trash by weight to promote recycling and keep refuse out of landfills.
 
New York, meanwhile, is going backward: it now recycles about 15 percent of the waste collected by the Sanitation Department, which is primarily from residences, down from a peak of 23 percent in 2001. And while city officials have said they are reviewing so-called “pay as you throw” systems, there is no indication that the city might adopt one.
 
“This issue is simply not getting the attention it deserves,” said Eric A. Goldstein, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York. “They’ve treated their recycling operation like the after-school clarinet program.”

To read more, click here.

Image courtesy of otobeygir.com.

Comments

[Coupon l l]

Hi Everyone!! I like this blog post, the New York City is really doing its best to cut down the Recycling process. The decrease in the ratio from 23% to 15% is really good.
I wish each and every city on our planet adopt some techniques to cut down the scrap by Recycling. :)

[towel warmer]

Wow, thes things are happening everywhere in the world. In Haiti debris are all over the streets just like that and people are being exposed to them