In his latest attempt to broaden New York City’s recycling program, and enhance his urban-environmentalist credentials, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has quietly launched a curbside recycling program.
Beginning today, residents in 15 buildings in four boroughs will be able to deposit their post-functional iPads, Kindles, hard drives, computer mice, laptops, TVs, printers, scanners, cell phones and video game consoles in a designated electronics recycling room or bin. When the bin is full, or there are 20 or more “core” items in the recycling room, the building super can call a city contractor to come pick them up.
Any building with ten or more units is eligible to enroll, and the department of sanitation expects the voluntary program to expand quickly.
More than half of the city’s housing stock meets that 10-unit requirement. The program will save building supers the effort of having to haul heavy items to the curb, and the contractor will reap more profit the more goods it collects.
“It’s the largest and fastest growing type of toxic material in our trash,” said David Hirschler, the sanitation department’s director of waste prevention.
Everyday electronics contain hazardous materials like mercury, lead and cadmium, which, when tossed into the trash like regular garbage, risk leaking into the environment. They also contain valuable, resellable material like gold.
The city’s program is designed to make it easier for New Yorkers to recycle materials that are often difficult to carry to the city’s annual recycling fairs or to retailers now required to recycle them (like Best Buy and Staples). It’s also meant to help New Yorkers comply with a new state law mandating they recycle most electronics starting in 2015.
“We found one of the challenges in New York City, with 50 percent of the population not having access to a vehicle, it’s not necessarily a convenient option to have to bring your electronics back to a retailer or a [recycling] event,” said Hirschler.
At the sanitation department’s five annual e-waste recycling events in 2012, the department collected just 150 tons of waste, a small fraction of the estimated 20,000 tons of electronics waste thrown out ever year (that doesn’t include the materials recycled at retailers).
“It’s a small portion of our waste stream, but it’s the largest portion of hazardous materials in the waste stream,” said Hirschler.
(Other hazardous materials found in the trash: auto fluids, fluorescent lamps, medical products, and oil-based paints.)
Electronic Recyclers International has won a 10-year contract to pick up the electronics, most of which will be sent to recycling plants in Massachusetts, where they will be broken down into sellable components.
“One of the requirements that we had was that we wanted to make sure that the vendor we chose was a responsible recycler,” said Hirschler.
In other words: the electronics “are not being improperly exported to third world countries,” said Hirschler.
Bloomberg has launched several initiatives in recent months to expand New York City’s recycling efforts, which have lagged behind those of several other large cities.
In April, he announced that all rigid plastics were recyclable, not just the ones with the appropriate numbers on them.
And in July, he announced the expansion of the city’s food composting program.
Right now, New York City recycles only about 15 percent of its waste.
Bloomberg wants to increase that to 30 percent by 2017.
Today, San Francisco recycles 77 percent of its garbage, while cities like Seattle and Toronto recycle about half.
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