NEW YORK, NY September 14, 2004 — Today marked a shift in the way the city handles its recycling program. It's a shift that Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty never imagined when he first began his career as a New York City garbage collector forty-four years ago.

Doherty: When I started on the job, we never dreamed of recycling other than, when you're on the truck when you pick it up as mungo and tried to make a couple of bucks on it. But to see what's happening here today, recycling has really changed.

Today, in a dramatic turn-around, Mayor Bloomberg announced a deal that marks a 20-year commitment to recycling plastic, metal and glass. The deal, with the metal recycling company, Hugo Neu, comes just two and a half years after the mayor had originally proposed scrapping the program in order to avert a multi-billion dollar budget crisis. Instead, the city had suspended plastic and glass recycling temporarily. Now Commissioner Doherty says the program is here to stay.

Doherty: You don't enter into long-term contracts unless you mean to keep recycling in New York City.

Standing before several bales of crushed plastic jugs and metal cans, with Pier 30, the future site of the Hugo Neu sorting facility, behind him, Mayor Bloomberg says his administration had the courage to step back and reassess the recycling program.

Bloomberg: I know there were those back then that doubted our sincerity, if that's the right word to use. But I said then, if we could find a ways, we should do it.

Hugo Neu currently has a short-term contract to take the city's metal, plastic and glass, for a fee of $51 a ton. Under the new, 20-year deal, the company will cap that price at $48 a ton, and invest $25 million dollars to build an environmentally-sensitive high-tech sorting facility on the waterfront in Sunset Park. Hugo Neu's chairman and CEO, John Neu, envisions other companies coming to the neighborhood and the city.

John Neu: it is our goal that our new facility will attract other manufacturers using the recycled material from this plant to make new products for consumers, industries, and the City of New York.

The sorting facility will accept nearly one thousand tons of metal, glass and plastic a day. And while it's not quite the same as stinky, rotting garbage, it's still garbage. Sanitation Commissioner Doherty was asked what his message is to the people of Sunset Park.

Doherty: It's all gonna come in by barge and it's gonna come out by barge. So, they're really not gonna see much activity out here. The biggest thing they're gonna see is jobs for the community.

About 100 permanent, union-wage jobs will be created, and Brooklyn residents get first dibs. And while most of the material will be barged in from the other boroughs, 25 recycling collection trucks in Brooklyn will drive to the site and drop off their loads. Elizabeth Yeampierre, with the community advocacy group, UPROSE, says the number of trucks is nothing compared to the overall benefit recycling will bring.

Yeampierre: This is a situation where, you could say there is a difference between good planning and bad planning. We're not of the mind that all of these facilities are a bad thing. The city's moving toward recycling, handling its wastes, in a much more responsible way.

Yeampierre says she's pleased the recycling trucks will be using low-sulpher fuel, and that the use of barges will reduce the number of trucks passing through other communities of color.

It was hard to find a single person criticizing the city's deal with Hugo Neu. At the news conference, Staten Island Councilmember Michael McMahon, chair of the council's sanitation committee and a frequent critic of Mayor Bloomberg's recycling suspensions, grinned and told the mayor those battles are now a thing of the past.

McMahon: I'm really standing here as giddy as a schoolchild because this is a great victory. And you're right, this is an historic announcement.

It's one that will be followed up by another major announcement. The mayor's proposal outlining the city's solid waste management plan for the next ten years is expected in October, and the city must come up with a long-term solution to its soaring garbage export costs. With the Hugo Neu deal, the city is, for the first time, saying that recycling is a long-term and viable part of that plan.