Testimony to New York City Council Sanitation Committee's Recycling Hearing

By Marjorie J. Clarke, Ph.D.,

Vice Chair, Citywide Recycling Advisory Board

April 17, 2002

EPA's November, 2001 study on multi-family recycling shows both the characteristics of successful, cost-effective and efficient programs and those that are not, studying 40 programs in all. New York was included in the middle group between the best and worst recycling cities, and though its recycling program does some things that more successful programs do, it can lower its recycling costs and achieve higher recycling and waste prevention rates by following the lead of the more successful communities in this study.

More than 85 percent of the costs of a refuse or recycling collection program, can be explained by 6 factors:

  1. scale of operations (tons collected),
  2. density of stops,
  3. quantity of material per stop,
  4. frequency of collection,
  5. location of pickup, and
  6. prevailing wages.

New York City is blessed with a high density of stops, and curbside pickup is the most cost-effective method for DOS. Better education (and enforcement) can increase the tons collected and the quantity of material per stop, decreasing recycling costs. The City Council wisely passed a law increasing and standardizing weekly collection of recyclables, which has been shown to increase participation rates and decrease costs.

The communities that collect abnormally low amounts of recyclables, tended to have huge costs. In these cases little public education or onsite instruction was provided. These communities did not track recycling specifically in apartment buildings. New York City doesn't track recycling rates in apartment buildings or have special programs directed at the special challenges in apartment buildings. NYC spends only about 50 cents per person per year on recycling education, as compared with over ten times that much in San Francisco, for example. Newark also spends much more per capita on recycling education, and has a successful program to show for it.

This EPA publication indicates that recycling costs have decreased significantly in single-family homes nationwide because of increased participation in recycling. For those programs where single-family homes recycle about 20%, the cost is $50/ton less than those programs where diversion is 17%. This shows the value of increasing participation even a little via recycling education and enforcement. As for apartment buildings, increasing curbside diversion rates from 14% to 28% was shown to decrease collection costs by $46/ton. The study also found that those programs with the highest recycling diversion rates had the lowest generation rate for combined waste and recyclables, a possible sign of waste prevention by the participants (see Fig. 1). Finally, EPA found that as recycling rates increase, the cost per ton of apartment building refuse collections goes up because the tonnage collected goes down (see Figure 2). This is even more true when single-family recycling rates increase (see Figure 3). Eventually recycling became cheaper than refuse collections.

The EPA also found that

What are the lessons for New York in this study?

First, it's penny-wise and pound-foolish to "save" on public education programs, and skimp on enforcement, since we pay dearly for it in suboptimal participation rates and contaminated recyclables that we have more difficulty (and greater expense) in marketing.

Second, we can decrease recycling costs by increasing collection efficiency if we invest in more and better continuing recycling education programs targeted to specific situations (e.g. apartment buildings) and using a variety of approaches.

Third, enforcement of recycling, including looking for and citing recyclables in black bags from apartment buildings, will yield violations is most places, since we only collect 45% the recyclables that DOS targets. Thus, enforcement can augment the positive impact of increased education by adding an economic incentive to the educational message, as well as pay for itself and more.

Fourth, increased recycling could have corollary benefits of decreasing total generation (i.e., waste prevention), reducing total waste management costs much further.

Fifth, "Pay as you Throw" systems can increase recycling rates and also reduce waste generation. Improving record-keeping for various types of apartment buildings would help DOS to target problem areas and design remedies (education/enforcement).

Sixth, increasing the availability of sufficient numbers of recycling containers of sufficient size will make it easier for residents to participate and increase recycling, decreasing costs,

Seventh, increasing the universe of recyclables to include more materials (e.g., mixed plastics, textiles, food) will increase the recycling rate.