by Matthew Schuerman
WNYC
The city’s restaurants, stores and other businesses recycle far less than previously thought, according to a coalition of environmental groups and unions.
According to a 2011 update to the environmental initiative PlaNYC, the city said that 40 percent of waste from commercial establishments is recycled.
The coalition, Transform Don’t Trash NYC, unearthed a consultant’s study issued a year later through a freedom of information request that determined the rate was closer to 25 percent — a difference representing 2 million tons a year.
“The national average is in the low 30s for recycling and that includes everybody, even the worst actors in the field,” Gavin Kearney, director of environmental justice programs at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, one of the coalition’s members. “So New York City for commercial waste recycling is back of the pack.”
The coalition, in a report of its own released Monday, advocated reforming the commercial hauling system. Currently, businesses contract individually with commercial haulers to handle their waste, which means that restaurants on the same block could be serviced by numerous different haulers. The same consultant, Halcrow Engineers, found that commercial haulers drive about three times as far on city streets to collect a ton of waste and recyclables than does a city sanitation truck that collects residential waste from a single neighborhood. The coalition proposed dividing the city into zones, and selecting one hauler to service each zone through a competitive bidding process.
City officials acknowledged that the commercial waste system could be improved.
“We look forward to working in partnership with the Council and a wide range of stakeholders to identify and implement sustainable policies to improve recycling rates and reduce our waste’s impact on the environment without placing a substantial new burden on small businesses, ” a spokeswoman for the Department of Sanitation, Kathy Dawkins, said in a statement.