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A Greener Trash Plan for NYC

exhaust from a garbage truck blurs a view of the Chrysler Buildingexhaust from a garbage truck blurs a view of the Chrysler Building

NYC’s current waste management system is plagued by environmental, financial, and equity problems. Both the NYC Department of Sanitation (DSNY) and private trash haulers depend on heavily polluting diesel trucks to export NYC’s waste, and the resulting truck traffic is poisoning New Yorkers’ air. The system disproportionately affects the quality of life in communities with large numbers of trash collection stations, and those located along major truck routes -- such as Hunt’s Point in the Bronx and Williamsburg-Greenpoint in Brooklyn. And, costs have risen as the City is forced to truck waste to more distant landfills.




Solution

In October 2004, Mayor Bloomberg and the DSNY unveiled a Draft Solid Waste Management Plan. The plan establishes a new system that relies on barges and trains to export NYC’s waste. To implement the plan, four of the City’s marine transfer stations will be redeveloped to allow DSNY’s waste to be exported by barge. The plan also encourages private haulers to use barge and rail export by allowing them to move their waste through city-owned marine transfer stations.

The Mayor’s plan will lessen many of the current system’s environmental and community impacts. Barge and rail export will lower the number of truck trips, ease traffic congestion and improve air quality. When the plan is fully implemented, the impacts of dealing with the City’s solid waste will be distributed more evenly -- and fairly -- throughout the city.

The Solid Waste Management Plan (SWMP) was approved in July 2006 by a City Council vote of 44 –5. The SWMP’s approval is a critical step forward for environmentally sensitive and cost-effective solid waste management in New York City.

Successful implementation of the SWMP can be accomplished by including the provisions outlined in the Follow-up section below.


Followup

The Solid Waste Management Plan should be implemented with the following provisions:

• Reduce transfer station capacity in currently overburdened neighborhoods by at least 4,000 tons per day of putrescible capacity and 2000 tons per day of construction and demolition capacity no later than April 1, 2007 and ensure that this results in substantially equivalent reductions in actual waste throughput, as opposed to reductions in unused capacity.

• Adopt measures to ensure commercial putrescible solid waste generated in the City is processed to the greatest extent possible through MTS’s or rail facilities.

• Develop measures to ensure that every transfer station has adequate on-site queuing space to handle all truck traffic that it generates and that every transfer station requires its customers to make use of that space.

• Commit to completing a comparative analysis of traditional waste disposal vs. environmentally sound alternatives, such as waste prevention, reuse, recycling and composting, by 2010 as required under the state Solid Waste Management Act.

• Sign the 20-year operating contract with the Sims Hugo Neu Corporation.

• Increase the diversion rate of recyclables.

• Increase recycling participation through a multifaceted recycling awareness campaign to include public education and increased enforcement personnel.


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