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Brigid Bergin:

You're listening to the Brian Lehrer Show. I'm Brigid Bergin, City Hall and Politics reporter filling in for Brian today. New York city has one of the lowest recycling rates of any big city. Only 18% of waste actually gets recycled each year. To put that figure in perspective, cities like San Francisco and Seattle have rates twice as high. So what's holding New York city back? Joining me now to discuss the current state of recycling and composting in the city, and what can be done about it, is Danielle Muoio, City Hall Reporter for Politico, New York. Danielle, along with her wonderful colleague, Sally Goldenberg, recently published a sweeping series for a Politico called, Wasted Potential. Welcome to WNYC, Danielle.

Danielle Muoio:

Thanks for having me.

Brigid Bergin:

So let's start with the numbers. Mayor de Blasio has pledged to reduce waste by 90% from 2005 levels. That would mean the city would only export 360,000 tons of trash by 2030. But according to your reporting, since the mayor made that promise, the city's trash exports have actually increased. Can you talk about what's going on here?

Danielle Muoio:

Yeah, we have a growing waste problem. So we're exporting 3.25 million tons of residential waste every single year and basically that's going to landfills all over the Eastern seaboard from South Carolina to upstate New York and those communities are bearing the burden of it.

Brigid Bergin:

Aren't residents and businesses required by city law to recycle both being subject to fines if they're not doing it right?

Danielle Muoio:

Yeah. So there's a couple of reasons why our rate is so low. So Seattle and San Francisco, which have rates as high as 60% they have food scrap recovery programs. That's mandatory, residents have to put it in a separate bin just like they would bottles and cans. New York does have a voluntary program, but it's not available to all parts of the city and the participation is really low. So in 2017, which was the last time the data was most recently available, we only recovered 1% of residential food scraps. And to put that into perspective, we are throwing out to landfills 1 million tons of food scraps every single year, it's a third of the waste stream.

Brigid Bergin:

You also talk about how there are no financial incentives for businesses and residents to recycle, like there are in other cities. What options are out there that work well in other places?

Danielle Muoio:

Yeah, so a big component of achieving a so-called zero waste goal, which is what we have is reducing consumption. So cities like Seattle and San Francisco have pay as you throw programs where basically you are charged for regular garbage but organics and recycling is free or it's at a reduced rate. And the idea is you're encouraging a behavioral change, you're more inclined to not be throwing stuff in your waste bin cause you have to pay for that. We don't have that. So you don't think of it the way other residents may in those cities.

Brigid Bergin:

Listeners, comments or questions for Danielle Muoio, City Hall reporter for Politico about the city's shortcomings on recycling and composting. You can tweet us @brianlehrer or give us a call now at (212) 433-WNYC. That's (212) 433-9692. Danielle, another huge issue that you found in your reporting was related to public housing. You found that the public housing system hardly recycles at all and why is that?

Danielle Muoio:

Yeah, so there really just isn't a great infrastructure for recycling and by that I mean, there aren't really accessible recycling bins. Food scrap recovery bins are really scarce and nitro relies on shoots where they get clogged, all the trash is getting pushed up to the federal monitors and, as we noted in our story, it gets like pushed back to the 14th floor. So just really hard for those residents to recycle.

Brigid Bergin:

In a story of this scale, with the amount of reporting that you and Sally did here, I can't imagine that, as you walk through the streets, that you don't look at garbage and recycling differently now. Was there something that triggered your desire to dig into this or how has it changed how you see waste in our city?

Danielle Muoio:

Yeah, it's, it's interesting you bring that up because I don't think you can be a New Yorker and not think about trash, right? You see trash bags all over the sidewalk. For us, what inspired the whole series was actually my colleague Sally, who did the reporting with me, had a coffee cup and she wanted to recycle it properly. She was walking for blocks and blocks and blocks and couldn't figure it out and she went to me and she was like, what's the deal like ha, like why? Why can't this stuff be easy? Why is trash everywhere? And that's what really started the whole thing.

Brigid Bergin:

And how far back did that conversation happen versus what we have here, this tour de force of reporting that we've seen from you now?

Danielle Muoio:

It was basically over the summer and then we started the project way back in September, so it was a long time.

Brigid Bergin:

So it's not just residents and business owners that aren't doing their due diligence when it comes to recycling. You and Sally also found that private waste carter's that pick up commercial rates, you actually did a ride along with them. Tell me about that experience.

Danielle Muoio:

Yeah, so for those who don't know, basically there are, the city estimates up to 90 different waste companies that pick up the trash generated from city businesses. And it's kind of like the Wild West out there. A lot of them are sort of going all over the city picking up in a single night. And so we did a ride along where we followed them from midnight to around 3:30 in the morning and we saw a bunch of them just throwing all of this stuff into the same truck. So these businesses are doing their due diligence, separating their bottles and cans from cardboard, from trash and your waste truck comes and just throws it all into the back. And it kind of spoke to what's been a longstanding issue of, there's just not a ton of regulatory enforcement of these companies. And that's why for commercial, on the commercial side, you're seeing a rate that's estimated at about 24%

Brigid Bergin:

yeah, it is so striking. I want to bring some of our callers into this conversation. Gail from Queens, welcome to WNYC.

Gail:

Thank you. Good morning. I live in a neighborhood in Queens where there is no recycling of metal, glass and paper, none at all. And I moved here from Manhattan where we did that diligently, we were very careful and thorough about recycling. So what I would like to know is what can we do to get that going?

Brigid Bergin:

And Gail, just if you don't mind, what neighborhood in Queens are you in now?

Gail:

Laurelton.

Brigid Bergin:

Okay. So Danielle, for residents that live in areas where the recycling program is not as good as it is in other parts of the city, is there anything they can do?

Danielle Muoio:

Well, metal, glass and plastic should be available to all parts of the city. So I guess my first question would be, if you're living in an apartment complex, talking to your landlord because that they are required to be providing and if they're not, you should report it to 311. For food waste, as I mentioned, it's a voluntary program, it's not available to all parts of the city. There are some options. The sanitation department does have compost drop-off sites that you can take your food scraps to, and if you go to DSNY you can look up where that is.

Brigid Bergin:

Gail, can you describe for us what your situation is? Is it an apartment complex or is it a home?

Gail:

No, it's a private house on a street of private houses.

Brigid Bergin:

And you're saying that the sanitation department is not picking up recycling on your street at all?

Gail:

Correct.

Brigid Bergin:

Well, as Danielle said, it sounds like you definitely have a 311 call there and potentially a call to your local city council members. So, Danielle, in your reporting, is part of what you uncovered some of what Gail's comment highlights for us that is a great deal of inconsistency about what's happening across the city?

Danielle Muoio:

Well, I think what we uncovered is... we did not report on that specific instance, so I am very interested in it and would like to hear more from you actually. I'm @muoiod on Twitter, if you have that you can DM me. But yeah, what we did uncover from a broader perspective is it's really hard for residents to do the right thing. The city doesn't make it that easy, so it is a problem.

Brigid Bergin:

I want to take another caller. We've got Chuck in Washington Heights. Chuck, welcome to WNYC.

Chuck:

Thank you. Thank love your show, Brian Lehrer Show is awesome. This is a topic that's very dear to my heart. I'm part of a garden and Washington Heights and we have two compost bins and most of our members from the garden and we do compost, but I do see a lack of composting with all the restaurants in my neighborhood, especially the juice bars and coffee bars and they just throw a ton of waste out and the one garbage pail with all the other coffee cups and it just kind of disgusts me, so I was wondering was there a way as a communicator myself to be a part of a community action program to help communicate ways we can compost better or is there a way that I can help change policy and maybe that citizens may socially get taxed or we should get charged extra for not composting or throwing out bad waste and not recycling.

Brigid Bergin:

Chuck, thanks so much for your question and Danielle, it sounds like people are really looking for ways to tap into either activist communities or policy communities to work on these issues. Are there some good resources available to people who want to push the needle on this?

Danielle Muoio:

Yes there are and so from a community advisory aspect, there is solid waste advisory boards. There is one in Manhattan. There is one in Brooklyn. So I would highly recommend reaching out to them because they do play a role in interacting with city officials and trying to advance good zero waste policy. Council Member Antonio Reynoso is the Chair of the Sanitation Committee and I would definitely encourage reaching out to him. I think it's great that you're saying we should have some kind of financial incentive based system to improve recycling rates. And I would make that known to both Council Member Reynoso and speaker Corey Johnson because a big reason why that hasn't happened yet, is there is a perception from many political leaders that this is a nonstarter and New Yorkers will really not be receptive to it. So I think if they hear from residents that you might be, that could definitely change things.

Brigid Bergin:

Danielle, I want to talk about a law that passed in October that aims to hold private carters more responsible. Since we're shifting to some of the policy actions that can be taken, can you talk a little bit about the law and if it actually has the teeth to make sure that the trash gets sorted properly.

Danielle Muoio:

Yeah, so this is a law that applies to the commercial carters that we were talking about before, this is for those that pick up the waste generated by businesses and restaurants and basically what it's designed to do is give the city better regulatory oversight of what's pretty much like a rogue Wild West industry. By doing that, basically it's going to try and divide the city into sections and only let two to three carters service each section, and the reason why that's important is because it'll make it easier to hold them to zero waste guidelines or waste reduction benchmarks and to catch like the commingling that we saw. So, that is something that has real promise. It's not expected to be fully implemented until 2023 so we have a bit of a waiting game and, and we'll be keeping an eye to see how it's implemented.

Brigid Bergin:

You wrote, as you said, that this law will go into effect for several years. Is there any kind of a way to get it off the ground sooner? Is it phased in at all?

Danielle Muoio:

Well, the reason it's going to take a bit is because basically once they divide the city into zones, the carter's will have to bid to services zone and with any competitive bidding process that takes some time because they have time to submit applications and the city reviews it. So it's a bit stuck in that sense. But it does hold great promise, and other cities on the West Coast, like Los Angeles do use a similar system.

Brigid Bergin:

You're listening to the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin filling in for Brian today and we're talking with Danielle Muoio, City Hall reporter for Politico New York about why New York City has fallen so short when it comes to recycling and composting goals. And Danielle, let's talk about composting for a minute there. Worse than their recycling rate for plastics, paper and metal. Is that of organic recycling also known as composting and write the rate is as low as 1% I mean, oh my gosh. How much of New York City's waste actually comes from food scrap?

Danielle Muoio:

It's a third of the waste stream, which is about a million tons.

Brigid Bergin:

Wow.

Danielle Muoio:

So it's a lot of waste.

Brigid Bergin:

And so why is so little of this composted?

Brigid Bergin:

Well, so it depends what side you look on. So on the residential side, again, the voluntary curbside collection program, it's not available to everyone and the drop off sites may not be convenient for everyone, so they're just not getting a ton of material. They're not tapping into the vast potential they could be. On the commercial side the city does mandate large restaurants and stadiums to be separating their food scraps, but it's not required of all restaurants yet. The city's actually looking to change that and expand it to smaller venues, but that's also a big component.

Danielle Muoio:

Let's go back to the phones, Lars and Windsor Terrace. Thanks for calling WNYC. See what's your comment?

Lars:

Hi, Yyeah, I've actually worked in catering companies for a number of years and we would set up impromptu kitchens across the city in places like office buildings and events spaces. And I found that while my wife and I, she's a master composter, we're recycling every bit of recycling material that we can at home, I'd go to these jobs and we then end up putting the bags and bags and bags of recycled materials from the event that we ran, like bottles and that kind of thing into the trash. It was because businesses are not required to recycle anything except white paper. So I think if people go to work and they're not required to recycle something, if recycling is here and there, it's not going to create a new habit. And I think that recycling needs to be, if we want to increase in recycling rates, we have to require businesses recycle, not just individuals.

Brigid Bergin:

Lars, thanks so much for calling WNYC and Danielle, I think part of what people are still trying to learn and understand is the impact of not composting and what these food scraps do in our waste system. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Danielle Muoio:

Yeah, definitely. So most of it ends up in landfills all over the mid Atlantic region and when it's there, it breaks down and it emits methane, which is a greenhouse gas that's very potent. So there are climate change impacts to that and beyond that, just from trucking it to all these landfills that's also contributing to an environmental issue. And then there's kind of the social impact of you're taking these food scripts that could easily be turned into fresh soil or to bio gas and instead dumping them in landfills in these communities that are then burdened with having to smell and be near this rotting waste that doesn't need to be there. And it's a million tons and that's increasing a reliance on landfills that doesn't need to be there.

Brigid Bergin:

Listeners of the Brian Lehrer Show may remember the rollout of those brown composting bins in certain neighborhoods back in 2017. Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia came on the show to talk about it. What's happened to that program since then?

Danielle Muoio:

So it's still available to certain parts of the city. It's not available everywhere yet. Now, it was supposed to be. The city had originally promised to make that program citywide by the end of 2018 and it was suspended. And you know, Mayor Bill de Blasio, years ago during his campaign for Mayor, promised to make it mandatory, which would definitely increase participation rates and never followed through on that. And a big reason why it's suspended is budget concerns and a feeling that with participation being so low, there's a reluctance from the Mayor to fund the expansion.

Brigid Bergin:

And yet it's still something that Commissioner Garcia supports and so is there a tension there between the Mayor and his lead administration official responsible for overseeing this program?

Danielle Muoio:

Yeah. So Commissioner Katherine Garcia is very supportive of the expansion. She believes, rightfully so, that the odds of us getting to zero waste without mandatory organic composting is low. She told us in our interview that the Mayor is supportive and she told, actually this anecdotal story about a time he saw another fellow commissioner put a banana in a food waistband and scolding him. But there is this tension with the budget and you know your budget is your plan.

Brigid Bergin:

well let's take another caller, Dave in the Northwest Bronx. Welcome to WNYC.

Dave:

Thank you Brigid. It's a pleasure and I hope you obviously... you need your own show, but thank you. It's a great morning listening to you. I wanted to ask your guest, every single time I call 311 with a specific question and I asked him, is this number plastic or is that number plastic recyclable? They don't know. They just say just put regular plastic in the bin. So a big part of the problem is calling 311, they're so uneducated about what you can specifically recycle. And the other question really quick is when you get a blister that like a package and it doesn't have a recycling number in it, should you put that plastic blister in with the recycling? Thank you. Really appreciate it.

Brigid Bergin:

Thanks Dave. So two questions there. Danielle, education among city workers and what to do with these materials when you're not sure if they're recyclable.

Danielle Muoio:

Yeah, I think you tapped into a really important point, which is that a lot of residents and businesses don't know what they can and can't recycle. And I think it is a problem and I think there does need to be more education. So there's a couple of answers to your question there. So one is I would advise going to the sanitation department website. Obviously I think it's a problem that 311 workers aren't answering your question appropriately, but the sanitation department does have a good website where you can basically type in whatever material you want to throw out and it'll tell you exactly what to do. Beyond that, with packaging, it's interesting like the Amazon packaging that like kind of blue envelope with the bubble wraps in it, that cannot be recycled. Most packaging cannot be recycled. So that is a sad reality and it is kind of an encouraging thing to kind of go shop local and to go out there because packaging tends to be hard to recycle

Brigid Bergin:

And can't be recycled here in New York city or cannot be recycled, period?

Danielle Muoio:

Yeah. Anywhere. I mean that that envelope material, we've had a bunch of sanitation officials tell us that they are trying to study what they can do with it, but it doesn't seem practical. Cardboard boxes you can just to be clear, but I'm talking about the flimsy packaging that I think he was bringing up.

Brigid Bergin:

yes. That all kinds of small things that people order online.

Danielle Muoio:

Yes.

Brigid Bergin:

That is very dispiriting. Danielle, let's take a moment and I want to play for you a clip of Mayor de Blasio responding to your reporting for your series, Wasted Potential, last week on Ask The Mayor. He said there's been "some improvement but went on to acknowledge that there's a lot more to do." Let's take listen to about 50 seconds of his response.

Bill de Blasio:

We've got to figure out how to get more people recycling, especially to begin with, like what we have right now are historic recycling programs still is not where it needs to be, so we've got to figure out what will help move that forward. In the meantime, on the bigger front, we are moving the New York City Green New Deal, a whole host of, yeah, we're divesting from fossil fuel companies. We have the most, literally the most vigorous in the world law requiring building retrofits to stop emissions. We're putting up electric vehicle charging stations all over the city. There's a whole host of things that are moving. We just did commercial waste zone legislation I think is also going to help improve recycling in that and the commercial side. But we've got a lot more to do and I will be speaking to it more in the coming weeks.

Brigid Bergin:

So more to come in the coming weeks. The Mayor's talking about improvements here to commercial waste legislation. We know so much of the city's skyline is changing each day with new developments. What's happening to all that trash currently and is this legislation actually working?

Danielle Muoio:

So that's the one we were mentioning before that will be fully implemented in 2023 so we don't know if it's working yet. It does hold promise and I do think it's fair for him to say that, that's something that should help. But there are other aspects to our series we highlight that are still problematic. We've talked about the residential waste stream. Construction and demo is another one that produces 6.4 million tons per year and there's no requirements to recycle that. So there's a lot to be done still to improve our waste prom.

Brigid Bergin:

So Danielle, we're going to take one more caller for you. Pete in Long Island city. Welcome to WNYC.

Pete:

Hello, can you hear me well?

Brigid Bergin:

We can hear you.

Pete:

Okay great. So I live in Long Island City and Queens West 2 district and I've always been very proud of New York City for being on top of the recycling things. So we have the brown compost bins, we have the metal, paper and glass recycling. And I've even gotten tickets for having the wrong thing in the wrong bin, which often happens if somebody is walking by and they just tossed their garbage in my recycling bin or something. But then I get a ticket for that. Or if I put the wrong kind of plastic in the recycling because they only want hard plastics in there. But then if you put a soft plastic in their styrofoam or something, they give you a ticket for that. And so they really been on the case at least where I live.

Pete:

And so then I would go somewhere else and Pennsylvania someplace where my mom lives and unlike turning away newspapers and aluminum cans, which just seems absurd to me. And so I was sort of blissfully maybe unaware that the rest of the city was having so much difficulty with it. So what can I do to encourage that as far as their like petitions going around that we can sign other kinds of sort of grassroots movements to try and help get this moving more. Because yeah, it just seems absurd to me that you wouldn't like composting scrap seems like a no brainer right? And it has reduced our waste output tremendously since they gave us the brown bin.

Brigid Bergin:

Pete, thank you so much. I want to give Danielle a chance to jump in here and it's amazing Danielle, all of these callers, there is a hunger for what can I do? And so what can Pete do?

Danielle Muoio:

Yeah, so I think definitely I'm reaching out to Speaker Cory Johnson and the City Council and Council Member, Antonio Reynoso, who's Chair of the Sanitation Committee and letting them know your concerns. Because like you mentioned, you have the brown bins and you feel like that's, rightfully so, has played a huge role in reducing the city's waste footprint. But those aren't available everywhere. And that is a big step the city could take to improve recycling rates. So I think getting in touch with council members and there are solid waste advisory boards. There is not one in Queens. I mean there's actually a defective group that I could help put you in touch with, but there are ones in Manhattan and Brooklyn solid waste advisory boards that you could also get in touch with who might be able to help you connect you with other resources.

Brigid Bergin:

Well, I want to thank Danielle Muoio for coming in, City Hall reporter for Politico New York, and congratulate you and your colleague Sally Goldenberg on the tremendous reporting that you did here. Check out their latest series for Politico New York called Wasted Potential. You are listening to WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin filling in for Brian Lehrer. Stay tuned.

 

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