NEW YORK, NY November 25, 2002 — When the city suspended plastic and metal recycling last summer, Mayor Michael Bloomberg argued the programs were an expensive failure. But recycling advocates wonder why New York City has failed where other cities have succeeded. Today and tomorrow, recycling advocates are hosting a roundtable in lower Manhattan to discuss the future of recycling here. WNYC's Amy Eddings visited San Francisco's recycling operations -- considered a model by many advocates -- to find any lessons New York City could learn.

San Francisco's Department of the Environment recently set a new standard for its sanitation officials to meet: recycle 75 percent of its commercial, residential, and construction waste by 2010.

Jared Blumenfeld: And the additional part of the legislation, which kinda makes it even more visionary, is when San Francisco reaches 50 percent diversion, which should be this year or next, we'll be able to set a time, a deadline, for getting to zero waste.

Zero waste. That's 100 percent recycling. And environment department director Jared Blumenfeld wants to reach this by 2020.

New York sanitation officials hate being compared to other cities even one like San Francisco, with a population density and diversity that comes closest to New York's. Our 20 percent recycling rate only reflects residential recycling, officials point out. Cities like Portland, with a 57 percent recycling rate, or Seattle, with 54 percent, or San Francisco, at 50, include bottle returns, and commercial and construction recycling -- programs that New York City, by law, doesn't count. But San Francisco's residents divert 25 percent of their trash away from landfills its sanitation officials are expanding their programs, not suspending them .and they're setting goals for zero waste. Mark Murray, head of Californians Against Waste, is impressed.

Mark Murray: San Francisco is doing a terrific job, particularly given the challenges of that city. It's the most densely populated city in California. And so San Francisco has had to be more creative to get to high diversion rates.

That creativity starts here, at the corner of Union and Laguna, in San Francisco's Marina district. Dan Cocilova works for NorCal, the private company that handles San Francisco's residential and commercial waste.

Dan Cocilova: Everything's in plastic bins with wheels. It's basically automated -- hook it up -- dumps in. We have a two chambered truck one side for recycling, one side for garbage. So it keeps everything separated.

But not separated the way residents do it here, in New York, with paper and metal set out separately. In order to get more people to recycle, and to recycle more stuff, San Franciso changed its system two years ago. Metal, glass, plastic, and paper all go together in one blue bin. Food and yard waste go into a green bin, to be composted. And everything else -- trash -- goes into a black bin.


Recycling and composting is free, but residents pay NorCal to take their trash. Service for a standard 32 gallon black bin costs about $17 a month. Smaller bins cost less. So, there's an incentive to recycle and compost -- the less garbage you thow out, the less you pay. Bob Besso heads NorCal's residential recycling program. He peers into a black bin.

Bob Besso: This is a reduced volume garbage container. Our standard size is 32. This happens to have an insert that reduces the volume to 20 gallons. This is what we call our success story. This is what we want people to do: smaller garbage, more recycling.

NorCal's new program will be city-wide by 2004, but already, the company says its "throw it all in one bin" service for metal, glass, plastic and paper has made it easier for people to recycle, cheaper for NorCal to collect, and has doubled recycling rates in some neighborhoods. Since separation isn't done at the curb, by residents, NorCal is spending $34 million dollars to add five new sorting lines at its recycling center at Pier 96.

Papers bounce along rubber-coated rollers and into a big hopper; plastic jugs, metal cans, and glass bottles drop through the rollers and onto another belt for more sorting. NorCal's Bob Besso.

Besso: A lot of the bottles that're coming over here that are whole, stay whole. Our process, when we mix in the compaction trucks, when you mix it with the paper and the plastic, everything else kinda crunches up, but the glass don't, if you don't overcompress it.

Glass is the big bugaboo for recyclers. Broken and mixed together, like it is in New York, it's practically worthless, and contaminates other recyclables, reducing their value. Kept whole, and sorted by color, like it is in San Francisco, glass sells for around 20 to 30 dollars a ton. Besso says NorCal experimented nine times with its trucks and collection process before it found a way to minimize broken glass. New York also looked into the issue, once. Its conclusion? Don't even try it. Steven Lawitts is a Deputy Commissioner in New York's Sanitation Department.

Lawitts: We did a pilot many years ago to test the economics of completely co-mingled collection, where we mixed paper, metal, glass and plastic all in a single truck. And we subjected that paper to market analysis as we had expected, it had degraded significantly and commanded a much lower price because of the presence of glass.

But San Francisco found a way to make co-mingled collection work so much so, that, at $180 dollars a ton, it's cheaper for NorCal to recycle than it is to take trash to a landfill, at $200 a ton. It's the reverse in New York. Picking up and processing metal, glass and plastic was projected to cost $240 a ton .almost double the price of collecting and exporting garbage. And until the local market changes, the future of recycling glass and plastic in New York seems gloomy. New York Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty spoke recently at a panel at the New School.

John Doherty: One can take different positions on recycling in New York City, and criticize the department or anyone else about whether it works or not. But the fact of the matter is, it is very, very expensive. So when you look at it purely from a dollar and sense point of view, it's hard to justify some of the recycling that goes on in this city.

Many recycling advocates think the city could do a lot to change that dollars-and-cents picture through tax incentives for recycling industries longer contracts with processors collecting garbage and recycling together .greater community outreach .even charging New Yorkers for their garbage service. But advocates feel their views fall on deaf ears. Emily Miggins says San Francisco is different. She used to work in NorCal's recycling department.

Emily Miggins: It wasn't that they were proactive in saying, "Hey, Greenpeace, come sit at my table." But I think what they really have done differently at NorCal is really work with the city coordinators who are hired to execute better ideas and plans for the city.

Miggins now lives in New York, and is a board member of the Grassroots Recycling Network. She's attended many council hearings, and has come to the conclusion that New York's sanitation officials lack the vision and brawn to make recycling work.

Miggins: I can't believe that the most powerful city in the world -- I mean, what an honor that the commissioner has to be asked to execute this program for the city of New York. and every time he gets up there, he sounds like a victim. A victim! It's a victim mentality.

Sanitation officials say they've worked very hard, and have spent lots of money to educate the public, and they say New York's twenty percent recycling rate is a big achievement for a city full of tough customers. Even so, San Francisco's director of the Department of the Environment, Jared Blumenfeld, says New York's arguments don't hold much water.

Jared Blumenfeld: I mean, I don't think anyone buys it. I think there's many different options that New York can pursue. There are a lot of different pilot programs that they should be looking at. They shouldn't just say, this isn't possible. They should work out how it IS possible.

The roundtable on the future of New York City's recycling, hosted by advocates, begins today at Pace University. New York's sanitation department is sending someone to observe the conference. A recycling official from San Francisco will be there. For WNYC, I'm Amy Eddings.