The Department of Sanitation has resumed both glass recycling and once-a-week collection of residential recyclable material, thus ending the latest, and most harrowing, chapter in New York City's 20 year-old recycling saga.
Once a week, residents are now expected to put their non-paper recyclables -- metal, plastic, and glass -- in blue curbside containers, and their paper recyclables -- junk mail, bundled newspaper and cardboard -- in green containers. Residents who don't have blue or green containers can use clear plastic bags or can order stickers, free, by calling 311 or visiting the city's Web site.
That glass is now being recycled once again is, some say, little more than a symbolic victory. Sure, it is an improvement over simply sending empty bottles to the landfill. But the Department of Sanitation trucks currently collect all different kinds of glass together, regardless of color, and this reduces the resale value often to the point of worthlessness.
This explains why Hugo Neu Schnitzer East, the Jersey City recycler that offered to pay the city for its metal and plastic last year, has drastically revised its bid. The city now pays Hugo Neu $51 per ton to process all non-paper recyclables. This is still about 50 percent less than what it would cost to dump the material in a landfill, but, coupled with the added labor costs for weekly routes, recycling has decisively shifted to an expense rather than a revenue source.
However, not everybody sees the victory as just symbolic. Some say it is a strategic victory, helping build the momentum for recycling.
"I am a firm believer that the more that we recycle the better it is not only for the environment but also for the city's economy," argues Staten Island councilmember Michael McMahon, chairman of the council's Solid Waste Committee.
Such arguments have gained added weight in recent weeks thanks to the Independent Budget Office's recent report analyzing the Department of Sanitation's budgetary math. Yes, the report concludes, recycling costs more than ordinary garbage collection, $47 million more in fiscal year 2002, but only as long as the amount of recyclables collected remains less than the amount of ordinary garbage collected.
The reason: hidden overhead costs. When department budgetmakers divide general and administrative costs, they do so by routes, not tonnage. Because recycling routes yield less weight on average -- 6.3 tons vs. 10.3 tons for ordinary garbage routes in 2002 -- recycling carries a disproportionate share of overhead burden when the numbers are reassessed on a cost-per-ton basis.
"It's the relative inefficiency of (recycling) collection that makes it more expensive," summarizes Preston Niblack of the Independent Budget Office. "Right now the comparison is swamped by the collection inefficiencies associated with recycling pickup."
In other words, says Niblack, shifting glass from the waste bin to the recycling bin is more than a symbolic gesture. Increase the amount of recyclables and you increase the average weight, and overall efficiency, of each recycling route. If the weight of recyclables became equal to the weight of ordinary garbage, you could conceivably eliminate the disparity in costs.
Virali Gokaldas, policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, agrees, noting that, because of space concerns, New Yorkers tend to throw out more food waste as a proportion of their daily trash -- 15 percent, while the national average is nine percent
"Food is one of the greatest untapped opportunities for cost savings," Gokaldas says "Composting is the next step if the city wants to save money on its trash bill."
So far, the Department of Sanitation's attempts to integrate kitchen waste into the recycling stream have yet to move past the pilot project stage. Without a robust aftermarket or a Hugo Neu-style benefactor willing to take bagged items directly out of the trucks, compost remains a long term prospect at best.
"At this point we are not looking to add other recyclables," says Kathy Dawkins, a Department of Sanitation spokesperson.
Niblack sees education as the best way to bulk up city recycling bins. Though long chided by local critics, the Department of Sanitation's Bureau of Waste Prevention, Reuse and Recycling had been earning praise for its educational programs prior to the 2002 plastic and glass suspension. To prepare residents for the resumption of glass and once-a-week service, the bureau orchestrated a series of Sunday newspaper inserts and a direct mail campaign aimed at four million households. All in all, it expects to spend close to $4 million within the next few months.
"That's a pretty good starting point, but the jury's still out," says McMahon. "I'd like to see more public service commercials. I'd like to see more advertising, especially in less traditional media, Web sites."
Robert Lange, president of the Bureau of Waste Prevention, Reuse and Reycling, didn't respond to calls for comment, but Dawkins said the Department of Sanitation is "committed to making recycling work" and has spread its $4 million advertising budget across a variety of media, including radio and television, as well as direct telemarketing.
McMahon, meanwhile, says he would like proof that Mayor Michael Bloomberg himself is a member the "strategic victory" camp as well. In a joint statement with Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty last month, Bloomberg described the current recycling program as both more "cost effective and environmentally-friendly" than the one it has now replaced.
"I call upon the mayor to continue using his bully pulpit to call for recycling like he does for 311," says McMahon, citing the increasing popularity of the city's telephone information program. "We have to get the message out: Eight million people can't just landfill this stuff anymore."
For links to sites concerned with Garbage in New York, check out Gotham Gazette Suggests.
Every year major legislation is passed in Washington that has a significant impact on many things in New York City, including the waterfront. If forces in the city as well as Albany worked more closely together this impact could be dramatically more positive than it is now.
The U.S. House recently voted to approve the Transportation Equity Act, a law that sets funding levels for virtually all transportation projects throughout the country for the next six years. Given that the average household spends 19 percent of its income on transportation, more than on any other expense except housing, one would think this critical legislation would be a rallying point for the New York delegation as it once was. In fact, the law would not exist in its present form were it not for the vision and leadership of the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who authored the original bill in 1991. That year, what had long been known as the "Highway Bill" was reconceived and rewritten to encompass all modes of transportation - in addition to cars and trucks -- bicycles, boats, trains, and traffic calming devices such as speed bumps were incorporated into our federal funding formulas for how we spend gas tax revenues.
Since that time, critical funding has come to the city for such diverse projects as the Long Island Railroad East Side Access, the Second Ave subway, the citywide Bicycle Network, Soundview Park Greenway, and a slew of new ferry terminals all under construction including St. George, Whitehall Street, and Pier 79 on Manhattan's west side.
In Washington, the House's version of the Transportation Bill will now have to be resolved with the Senate's version ($318 Billion) and the President's ($247 billion) before the current deadline expires April 30 (it's already been extended twice). The president came in with the lowest number because it was felt that, given the current economic climate, nothing more would be affordable without an increase in the gas tax--a non-starter in an election year. Of course, the Texas Transportation Institute's 2003 Urban Mobility Study shows that congestion in the nation's 75 largest urban areas has increased again this year, as it has in every area every year since 1982. While today's papers decry "expensive" gas, in relative terms it is as cheap as it has been in three decades, and all it is giving us is more traffic congestion.
While the focus of many people is on land-side transportation, the reality is that with global trade at all-time high levels, the land transit is only half of the picture. The nation's seaports currently handle 95 percent of our international trade, and virtually every one of them has access problems on both the waterside and landside.
With 1.3 billion tons of cargo valued at $764 billion moving through U.S. ports each year, our infrastructure is ever-strained to meet the growing demands of international trade. The Port of New York and New Jersey handles nearly 12 percent of this amount, meaning that one of every eight dollars in port commerce nationwide passes in and out of New York Harbor, mostly underneath the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.
The federal policy to improve the port is largely influenced by the Water Resources Development Act. While traditionally the domain of dredgers, shippers, and people in flood prone areas, this legislation is increasingly incorporating environmental components such as watershed planning and environmental restoration projects, and that's a good thing.
In the current budget year, for instance, $103 million in federal dollars are being spent to deepen the Port of New York and New Jersey's shipping channels. These investments are needed, advocates say, to accommodate the larger and larger ships which are bringing goods to the larger and larger retail stores popping up throughout the country. At the same time, the US Army Corps of Engineers is spending approximately $1 million to advance an environmental project known as the "Hudson-Raritan" restoration; the current phase of work brings federal money to help clean-up the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn and the Passaic River in New Jersey-two of our areas most abused water bodies. This is a prime example of how the New York and New Jersey delegations can and should work together more closely.
Looking ahead, what's needed are federal policies that embrace the waterways in terms of mobility, recreation, and environmental restoration. When legislative and funding opportunities arise such as the Transportation and Water Resources Bills, we must have leadership in our Congressional delegation so our city and port can not just remain competitive, but set a higher standard for the other major cities and ports around the country with whom we increasingly find ourselves competing.
Carter Craft, an urban planner, is program director of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance.
For years, New York City park supporters have been calling on the city to provide an adequate baseline of funding for parks and recreation. Indeed, having sufficient resources – in staffing, land, and equipment - is one of the key factors contributing to an excellent urban park system, according a recent study by the Trust for Public Land. New York spends far less on parks than the cities with the best systems in the country. But the report, The Excellent City Park System, looks beyond funding to identify other measures that make a city park system great.
"If you don’t have other factors like good planning, community involvement, and good access, then throwing money at it won’t solve all of the challenges," said the study’s author, Peter Harnik, who directs the trust’s Green Cities Program. The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, which has developed a number of innovative programs in recent years, can benefit from the research in this report as it works to improve the city’s vast network of parks, playgrounds, fields, forests, and recreation facilities.
The Excellent City Park System is based on two days of discussions by 25 experts on urban and park issues, followed by surveys and phone interviews with park directors all over the country. The seven measures of excellence it discusses include:
The seventh measure -- "in many respects the most important one," said Harnik -- is having benefits for the city beyond the boundaries of the park.
The report also highlights numerous "excellent practices" from cities all over the country. One of the examples cited is the New York City Parks Inspection Program, which conducts 4,000 park visits a year focusing especially on the safety of grounds and equipment.
City park departments are limited by factors beyond their control, like the location of existing parkland. For example, it would be difficult for New York, with little vacant land and high-priced real estate, to have a park within six blocks of nearly every resident, as Denver does. The report mentions New York City’s planting of more than 2,000 concrete traffic triangles and medians under the Greenstreets program as a way to squeeze more greenery into a built-out landscape. Nevertheless, with some areas totally devoid of usable parks, New York could learn from Chicago, which has greatly increased green and open space through a collaborative effort of the city’s planning department, public schools, and two park agencies. The project, called the CitySpace Plan, studied community park needs and every parcel of existing private and public open space. It also worked with other government agencies and numerous civic and business organizations to understand and make use of the economic and regulatory processes that encourage the creation of parkland, as well as to change regulations or laws that discourage it.
One thing that many of the country’s best park systems have in common is a frequently updated master plan developed with substantive community involvement. An ideal plan, according to the report, would inventory resources, identify needs and goals, and set strategies, timelines, and budgets to implement those goals. Although New York City does not have such a plan, the Department of Parks and Recreation has recognized the need to do more long-term, in-depth planning, according to Deputy Commissioner Liam Kavanagh. The department is in the midst of developing a 10-year capital plan that is looking not only at spending on specific park infrastructure but also at longer-term needs as the city’s population and its use of parks changes.
Another hallmark of excellent parks that New York City lacks is a citizen advisory board. Instead, said Kavanagh, the parks department’s advisory mechanism is the 59 community boards. "We agree with the spirit of that recommendation," he said, "but I don’t know if a formal citizen advisory board would work so well in New York. New York is really a collection of neighborhoods, and people feel attached to their neighborhood, more so than their borough or even the city as a whole."
Harnik disagreed. "Each community board is only interested in its own community," he said. "It’s hard for any citizen to have a big picture of the New York City park system if it is not constituted as a citizen advisory board to the park system as a whole."
Over the last couple of decades, community involvement in New York City parks has taken root and grown like a weed. Almost half the parks in the city have affiliated groups, and 12,000 New Yorkers volunteer in their local parks through Partnerships for Parks. The grassroots activists organized by New Yorkers for Parks, a citywide coalition that serves as both watchdog and advocate, held park budget cuts to a minimum during the economic downturn of the last few years. Taking this further, however, involving citizens in a system-wide planning process for the parks can translate into greater public support for funding. In cities that have done this, including Seattle and Nashville, voters or elected officials subsequently approved additional spending on parks. Anne Schwartz is a freelance writer specializing in environmental issues. Previously, she was the editor of the Audubon Activist, a news journal for environmental action published by the National Audubon Society, and an editor at The New York Botanical Garden.