“At the Lower East Side Ecology Center, an acre of land that sits between the FDR Drive and the East River, some 3,500 people drop eight tons of food scraps in a communal container every week.”
Wasted Potential: the consequences of NYC’s recycling failure
Politico: Sally Goldenberg and Danielle Muoio
“Businesses, stores and restaurants, which are part of a separate, loosely regulated system of commercial trash, recycle only 24 percent of the 3 million-plus tons of trash they produce each year, according to a recent report on the industry. A sweeping city law passed last year aims to change that.
Meanwhile, the city’s construction and demolition industry, which produced 6.4 million tons of garbage last year, according to a state official, recycles half the time.
The result: Year after year, New Yorkers rely on rail, barge and trucks to ship trash to methane-producing landfills and toxin-emitting incinerators. The total haul cost the city $409 million last year, a price tag that ballooned after City Hall reformed its waste management system in 2006.”
Read on here.
Let’s not be a city that is taking a front line position on the climate crisis in name only?
