By Benedict Moran
Standing on the street near the Bronx apartment building where he lives one Tuesday night, Alfred Munoz insists that he is eco-friendly, even though he doesn't recycle.
"I am!" Munoz says. "But there's just not an incentive to recycle. You have to go all the way downstairs into some dark corner."
Twenty years after New York City’s recycling program began in 1989, many residents seemingly share the thoughts of Munoz. Despite often expressing a desire to be environmentally friendly, only half of the city’s potential recyclable waste is salvaged. This may have been why a 2008 study by Popular Science magazine ranked New York City's recycling efforts last of 50 American cities listed.
“They’ve hit a ceiling, and they’re just not going beyond that,” says Marjorie Clarke, an assistant professor at City University of New York who wrote her Ph.D. dissertation on recycling in New York City. “They figure, that’s as much as New Yorkers will recycle. End of story! But there is more that can be done.”
Approximately 16 percent of New York City's total waste is recycled, according to a 2004 study by the Department of Sanitation (DOS). Almost 36 percent of total waste is composed of recyclable materials; in other words, New Yorkers recycle about 50 percent of what they could with current levels of participation. This amounts to approximately 5,400 tons per day.
Other cities, like San Fransisco, with a recycle rate of 70 percent, and Los Angeles, at 60 percent, have fared much better.
Some waste disposal experts claim that comparing recycling programs elsewhere to that of New York City -- with its dense, culturally diverse, and demographically mixed neighborhoods -- is misleading.
“Generally, most New Yorkers are very eager to recycle,” said David Hurde, director of the Council on the Environment of New York City (CENYC), a nonprofit advocacy organization that runs recycling awareness campaigns for the Mayor’s office.
"But getting complete participation in high-density, multi-family dwellings is difficult, because there is just so much anonymity," he said. “New York faces a unique challenge in that regard.”
Recycling rates – known as “diversion” rates, for how much potential recyclables are diverted from dumps – differ drastically across the city. In South Bronx, only 13 percent of recyclable waste is recycled, while over 83 percent is in lower Manhattan, according to Department of Sanitation statistics.
Landlords largely explain this discrepancy, said Kathy Dawkins, a communications officer at DOS. Landlords are responsible for providing a recycling area, containers, signage, and preparing the trash for collection.
“We have found that building superintendents, owners, and managers are key to how well an area recycles,” Dawkins explained. “If you have a good super who knows what to do, the numbers go up.”
CUNY’s Clarke says the onus is not only on the city to put more pressure on building managers to make recycling easier, but to encourage residents to make it their own responsibility. Her studies demonstrated that putting a recycling area on each floor is critical to encouraging residents to participate.
Clarke also believes that more money should be put into education. "You're basically competing against the advertising industries, which are spending billions on getting you to buy stuff and throw away stuff," she said.
To be sure, many New Yorkers still don’t know how to recycle and they make many mistakes with they throw out waste, says the CENYC’s Hurde.
"It's amazing how many New Yorkers think a clamshell is a bottle or a jug," he said, referring to how other waste gets mixed up with recyclables. His organization distributes pamphlets, coordinates 'how-to-recycle' games at community events, and even plans alternative methods such as hip hop song contests to promote recycling knowledge.
But it is unclear how effective this campaign has been, as historical data on recycle rates doesn’t exist.
In 2002, faced with the post 9-11 budget crisis, the city halted the recycling of metal, glass, and plastic. Though it was reinstated in 2004, Hurde says many New Yorkers still don’t realize glass and metal can be recycled.
Ron Gonen, the co-founder and CEO of RecycleBank, an organization that runs a national recycling incentive program, thinks the city’s rate could be increased.
"Every time New York City can recycle, [it] saves the city a significant amount of money," he says. Since 2001, when the city’s last landfill on Staten Island was filled to capacity, all trash has been sent out of state, and this costs more than recycling at local processing centers.
"The fact that recycling rates are so low in New York City creates a major financial burden on the city that could be resolved by a greater focus on recycling,” he explained.
The city makes around $14.8 million in recycling revenue, and additional revenue from fines collected from recycling violations.
In the 2009 fiscal year, the DOS issued 129,990 violations for failure to properly put recyclables out for collection with non-recyclables, failure to put recyclables out for collection, or placing non-recyclables in a recycling container. In 2008, the most recent year available, $3,338,556.78 in fines were collected from all recycling violations.
Jason M., 30, a long-time resident of Crotona Park, an area of the Bronx with the second-lowest diversion rate of the city, says very few people recycle on the street where he grew up.
"From this corner here, to this corner here, nobody recycles" he said, standing on Vyse Street and pointing to the opposite corners of 173rd and 174th Streets. "Why? Because the managers don't give enough information for people to do it."
But six years ago, he moved into a green building, with solar panels and gardens just two blocks from where he stood, and says he recycles every day.
“They told us we have to,” he said. “And they have pamphlets at the door to remind you.”
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