POLITICO
April 1, 2016
Two former top sanitation officials on Friday will announce their support for a citywide zoning system to govern how private waste carters operate throughout the five boroughs.
Brendan Sexton, who served as sanitation commissioner during the
Crain’s New York
April 1, 2016
One of the most powerful tools available to the average New Yorker to fight climate change is to recycle all that we can. We are proud of what we’ve accomplished with recycling in our
The Working Families Party will announce later today that it is joining a city coalition of labor an environmental advocates pushing for reforms to the city's private waste industry.
Steve Changaris — a lobbyist for private waste haulers — claims that New York City’s small-business owners are happy with the many private garbage-hauling companies that offer a "choice" of whom we hire to truck our waste away.
As the thermometer climbs this month, New Yorkers can expect a familiar and unwelcome odor: garbage. It should be a reminder of how much we throw away and our collective responsibility to the workers who pick up the trash. As president and recording secretary of Teamsters Joint Council 16, we count New York’s sanitation workers among our brothers and sisters. The Department of Sanitation employees who collect trash and recycling from our homes do so with dignity. They get the fair pay, protections and respect befitting this important job.
Many New Yorkers don't know what happens to that coffee cup after they throw it away, but the ugly truth is slowly being revealed. Between recent hearings at City Hall, and a City Limits’ series on waste ("New York’s Trash Challenge"), our city is finally coming to grips with the staggering amount of waste we generate and how we choose to deal with it. Between our homes and businesses, we generate anywhere from 6 to 8 million tons of waste every year and because our recycling rates are woefully low, the great majority of that waste is needlessly buried in landfills or burned in incinerators outside of the city.
As midnight approaches, commercial garbage trucks rule the streets of New York. On a Thursday night in Lower Manhattan, trucks from five different companies can be spotted within as many blocks. Workers hang off the back on a marathon ride to pick up New York's unwanted debris. The sun will be up all too soon and they have hundreds of stops to go.
When city leaders and policy advocates take up the issue of sustainability in New York's commercial trash industry today, they will not be debating a bill or a resolution, but looking for a way to fundamentally change the city's private carting industry.