NY Times Applauds Recycling’s Revival

The editorial board of the New York Times has cast its vote in agreement with the return of plastics and glass recycling to New York City’s curbside recycling program.

The administration of New York mayor Michael Bloomberg modified the program a year ago to accept only newspapers and metal while advising residents to stop including plastic and glass containers.

But a compromise budget deal with the New York City Council and a recyclables handling and marketing deal with Hugo Neu Schnitzer East have helped expedite the return of (first) plastic and (then, next spring) glass recycling to New York City.

“Bringing back recycling was not just the right thing to do environmentally—it was best for the city economically,” a Times editorial from Saturday, July 12, comments. “The suspension [of container recycling] saved nowhere near the $40 million projected, and it bloated the tonnage and handling costs for the regular trash,” the editorial continues.

The editorial notes, however, that the city government will now have to communicate with its residents to “make recycling . . . less confounding.” It notes that, “Like adolescents told that they no longer have to eat vegetables, people rather easily kicked the habits formed over a decade of sorting and binning. In fact, even the recycling of newspapers and metal—which was not suspended—suffered as some residents treated recycling as an all-or-nothing venture.”

The current New York City Department of Sanitation schedule has plastics containers again being accepted in weekly recycling collections this month. But in August, collections will go to every other week—until April 1, when weekly collection will start back up. Also on April 1, glass recycling will be added back to the mix.