Report - Transform Don`t Trash NYC

Transcription

TABLE OF CONTENTS
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
RECYCLING RATES IN NEW YORK CITY’S COMMERCIAL SECTOR ARE ROCK-BOTTOM
WHY RECYCLING MATTERS
WHY IS NEW YORK CITY’S COMMERCIAL RECYCLING RATE SO LOW?
NEW YORK CITY’S COMMERCIAL WASTE COLLECTION SYSTEM IS GROSSLY INEFFICIENT & HIGHLY POLLUTING
NEW YORK CITY’S COMMERCIAL WASTE SYSTEM HARMS NEW YORKERS’ PUBLIC HEALTH, PARTICULARLY IN
OVERBURDENED COMMUNITIES
A HANDFUL OF LOW-INCOME COMMUNITIES AND COMMUNITIES OF COLOR BEAR THE BRUNT OF OUR
COMMERCIAL WASTE SYSTEM
SOLUTIONS: TAMING THE GARBAGE “WILD WEST”
CONCLUSION: NEW YORK CITY AT 70% RECYCLING
APPENDIX A: COMMUNITY HAULER SURVEY AREAS
ENDNOTES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This report and underlying research were produced by core members of the Transform Don’t Trash NYC coalition including
the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA), ALIGN: The Alliance for a Greater New York (ALIGN), the
International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI) with Justin Wood of NYLPI as
the lead author. Many thanks to Natasha Dwyer and Juan Camilo Osorio of NYC-EJA; Gavin Kearney of NYLPI; Kristi
Barnes, Keith Brooks, and Maya Pinto of ALIGN; and Cassandra Ogren and Michael Mignano of the International
Brotherhood of Teamsters for their research, review, and contributions to this report. Thanks to Lauren Ahkiam of the Los
Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, Hays Witt of the Partnership for Working Families’ Transforming Trash campaign,
and Abby Shull of the San Jose Environmental Services Department for their contributions to our understanding of
commercial waste systems in leading cities.
Dirty, Wasteful, and Unsustainable © April 2015, Transform Don’t Trash NYC.
ABOUT US
The Transform Don’t Trash NYC coalition is dedicated to transforming New York City’s commercial trash industry to reduce
waste and pollution, foster clean and healthy communities for all New Yorkers, and create good jobs. Members include
the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance (and its member organizations El Puente, the Morningside Heights/West
Harlem Sanitation Coalition, Nos Quedamos, The Point Community Development Corporation, Sustainable South Bronx,
UPROSE, and Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice), ALIGN, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Joint Council 16
& Locals 813, 831 and 210, and NYLPI.
DIRTY, WASTEFUL & UNSUSTAINABLE: THE URGENT NEED TO REFORM NEW YORK CITY’S COMMERCIAL WASTE SYSTEM • TRANSFORM DON’T TRASH NYC
1
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
New York City’s sprawling commercial waste system performs significantly worse on recycling and efficiency
than previously believed. Under an inefficient and ad-hoc arrangement that developed over the past
several decades, hundreds of private hauling companies collect waste from restaurants, stores, offices, and
other businesses nightly and truck it to dozens of transfer stations and recycling facilities concentrated in a
handful of low-income communities of color. This waste is then transferred to long-haul trucks and hauled
to landfills as far away as South Carolina. Previously unpublished studies and new data reveal just how
chaotic this system is and make clear that fundamental reform is needed if we are to follow through on the
City’s recently adopted commitment to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 80% by 2050.
As recognized by city officials, meeting this ambitious but attainable GHG goal will require rapid and
substantial increases in the efficiency of our buildings, power production, transportation, and solid waste
systems.1 In the solid waste sector, there is tremendous need for improvement and the City will fall far
short of the progress it needs to make in reducing the environmental and public health impacts of our
garbage if it focuses only on residential recycling while ignoring the failures of a larger, highly polluting
and inefficient commercial waste system.
As a result of the 2006 Solid Waste Management Plan and the city’s PlaNYC sustainability initiative, NYC
has made major public and private infrastructure investments that will reduce the global and local impacts
caused by collection and disposal of our residential waste stream, which is handled by the Department of
Sanitation (DSNY). While there is still much more to be done, New Yorkers can now recycle plastics, paper,
metal, and glass, and curbside pickup of food scraps is available in several pilot neighborhoods.
Investment in new municipal transfer stations will allow remaining garbage to be exported via barges and
trains, eliminating over 6 million truck miles per year from our local streets and reducing impacts on
environmental justice communities disproportionately burdened by the City’s waste infrastructure. 2
Yet even after these improvements, our waste system will remain a major contributor to climate change:
emissions of methane and other greenhouse gases from landfills storing NYC waste have been estimated at
2.2 million tons per year, and are probably much higher given new estimates of the amount of waste
generated by the city’s business sector.3 The City acknowledged in a 2014 study that achieving the 80x50
goal will require transformational change:
2
“Volumes of waste would need to drop as consumers use fewer disposables and manufacturers
of goods pay greater attention to packaging. Nearly all organic waste would need to be
composted or processed in anaerobic digesters within the region; nearly all recyclable material
would need to be recycled; and most of what remains would need to be turned into energy at
state-of the-art, low-emission conversion facilities. Only a very small portion of remaining waste
would be sent to landfills.”4
While the City has acknowledged that our solid waste system will need to maximize efficiency and sustainability
to achieve our GHG goals, a major unpublished 2012 study of the commercial system commissioned by DSNY
reveals just how far we are from doing so as recycling rates for businesses are significantly worse than the
already low rates previously believed to exist. For this study, DSNY retained Halcrow Engineers, a nationally
recognized consultant, to aggregate and analyze data from hundreds of transfer stations and recycling facilities
in the region and to estimate the total amount of commercial waste generated citywide through an analysis of
employment numbers in each industry. Transform Don’t Trash NYC obtained a copy of this study through a
Freedom of Information Law request. Among other things, the Halcrow study found:
•
New York City’s businesses generate about 5.5 million tons of waste per year – 2 million tons more
than previously estimated.5
•
The recycling rate for this giant waste stream is only about 25%, significantly
worse than the 40% commercial recycling rate published in Mayor Bloomberg’s
2011 PlaNYC update. 6 Moreover, annual reports filed by private waste companies with the state
suggest that recycling by major haulers may be much lower – only 9-13% in 2014.7 NYC is below
average in a nation that recycles at a rate of 34.5%, and while we produce more commercial waste than
any other US city, we are nowhere near leading cities in commercial waste recycling.
Both the Halcrow study and Transform Don’t Trash NYC’s (TDTNYC) own analysis of hauling company and
transfer station customer locations show that our chaotic, truck-intensive commercial waste system is not just
problematic from a climate perspective – it also harms New Yorkers on a day-to-day basis and squanders
important economic development opportunities. NYC streets are inundated with thousands of commercial
collection trucks overlapping one another on inefficient collection routes that needlessly subject New Yorkers to
the pollution, noise, congestion and hazards of excessive truck traffic.
•
•
TDTNY members conducted a survey of private haulers operating in businesses districts in the five
boroughs and found as many as 22 different hauling companies operating on individual commercial
strips.
Similarly, the 2012 DSNY study examined commercial truck traffic in 13 community districts
throughout the City and found more than 25 different private haulers collecting commercial garbage in
every one. In Midtown Manhattan, the report identified 79 different haulers collecting garbage.
3
TDTNYC also obtained data collected from commercial haulers by NYC’s Business Integrity Commission (BIC)
through another Freedom of Information request, which enabled us to map the locations of businesses
generating waste in NYC and the private transfer stations to which their waste is hauled after collection. This
new data confirms the inefficiency of a system where three-fourths of all waste handled in NYC is trucked to
transfer stations in just three outer-borough neighborhoods no matter where it is collected.
Private garbage trucks routinely bypass closer facilities with available capacity in order to dump their waste at
facilities in overburdened communities in the South Bronx, North Brooklyn, and Southeast Queens, adding
significantly more truck miles to a system that is already grossly inefficient.
These inefficiencies are endemic to our current commercial waste system and perpetuate poor recycling
practices, create unnecessary waste truck traffic and pollution, and contribute to public health and safety
problems for millions of New Yorkers. In sum, there is overwhelming evidence that NYC’s commercial waste
system underperforms and is in need of transformation.
SOLUTIONS
Our city can and must do better. A better waste system would dramatically increase business recycling rates,
eliminate millions of miles of unnecessary, overlapping collection truck traffic, and site the recycling
infrastructure we need as equitably and efficiently as possible. It would lessen air and noise pollution for
millions of New Yorkers who live near and walk on commercial streets where garbage is picked up every night,
while dramatically lowering GHG emissions caused by trucking our garbage hundreds of miles to decompose in
out of state landfills. It would also raise wage, benefit and safety standards in an industry where workers are
poorly compensated and exposed to unnecessarily dangerous working conditions.*
The Transform Don’t Trash NYC coalition proposes that NYC adopt a zoned collection system, an approach to
commercial waste management that has proven successful in other cities. In such a system, commercial waste
haulers would compete for the exclusive right to collect waste within designated collection zones over a set
period of time. In order to win the right to serve a commercial zone, companies would need to meet
ambitious environmental targets, maintain high-road labor standards, and invest in systems and infrastructure
to divert recyclables and organic waste from landfills and incinerators. In return, those hauler awarded zones
would benefit greatly from a steady, sizable, and dense base of customers. This system would ensure far greater
accountability through reporting requirements and more effective public oversight.
*
Worker health and safety problems will be the focus of a future TDTNYC report.
4
RECYCLING RATES IN NEW YORK CITY’S
COMMERCIAL SECTOR ARE ROCK-BOTTOM
One of the primary findings of the 2012 DSNY/Halcrow study is that recycling rates for NYC’s business waste are
even worse than previously thought, and our city continues to lag far behind national leaders like San Jose,
Seattle, and San Francisco.
Our continued over-reliance on landfilling generates excessive greenhouse gas emissions and squanders the
opportunity to develop thousands of good, local recycling jobs for NYC workers. This low recycling rate isn’t
simply a function of bad actors in the industry, however – it is endemic to the chaotic, ad-hoc system that NYC
has chosen to adopt for commercial waste management. This environment gives private garbage haulers little
incentive to invest in better recycling infrastructure, and makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the City to
monitor compliance with recycling laws.
To overcome a lack of reliable data on the amount and types of waste generated and recycled by businesses in
New York City, the City has spent millions on consultants every 8-10 years to estimate the most basic measures
of how NYC’s commercial waste sector is performing. The 2012 Halcrow study used waste generation,
employment, and recycling data to estimate that New York City's businesses generate 5.5 million tons of solid
waste each year, over 4 million tons of which is disposed, rather than recycled.8 The study estimated that for the
waste stream generated by NYC businesses – including offices, restaurants, retail stores, hotels, and health care
facilities – only 24% of waste is recycled9.†
Annual reports filed with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation by transfer stations and
recycling facilities suggest that recycling rates for major portions of the commercial waste stream may actually
be much lower. For example, 2014 reports filed by two of the biggest companies hauling waste and operating
transfer stations in NYC show recycling rates of only 9% and 13% respectively.10
†
Business or trade waste generated as part of daily businesses is often known as commercial putrescible waste because it includes organic or
putrescible materials. This is distinct from construction and demolition waste often known as “C&D” which is comprised primarily of inert materials
such as concrete and metal. The Halcrow study and this report are concerned with the commercial putrescible waste stream.
5
Although the majority of what does get recycled is
paper and cardboard, the Halcrow study estimates that
a staggering 66% – at least 700,000 tons – of cardboard
and paper is landfilled or incinerated every year despite
the existence of relatively robust local recycling
infrastructure and markets for these materials.11
Recycling of organic material, such as food waste, is far
worse. Although organic material comprises about a
third of the commercial waste stream, very little is
composted or anaerobically digested.12
METAL
6%
GLASS
4%
OTHER
22%
PLASTIC
14%
ORGANIC
S
27%
PAPER
27%
COMMERCIAL WASTE
GENERATED
BY TYPE 14
WASTE DISPOSED
BY BOROUGH 13
6
WHY RECYCLING MATTERS
Recycling has a dual impact on climate change. First, most waste that is not recycled is buried in landfills where
it decomposes slowly, emitting large amounts of methane gas, a climate warming agent 20 times more potent
than carbon dioxide.15 Second, producing materials such as paper or metals from recycled feedstock uses much
less energy and resources than does manufacturing these products from virgin materials. Each ton of paper
recycled, for example, saves 7,000 gallons of water, saves enough energy to power an average US home for 6
months and avoids a total of one ton of greenhouse gas emissions.16 While metals like aluminum don’t cause
substantial landfill emissions, aluminum production is highly energy intensive. Recycling aluminum requires
96% less energy to produce than virgin metal and avoids the environmental damage of open-pit bauxite
mines.17
Optimal management and recycling of the huge portion of our waste stream comprised of organic substances
such as food scraps can also have a large impact. Sustainable methods for handling this waste range from
anaerobic digestion of food waste in sealed chambers (similar or identical to waste water treatment methods) to
aerobic composting in covered piles. While calculating GHG impacts of methods such as anaerobic digestion,
aerobic composting, and landfilling is complex, according to EPA estimates every ton of food waste properly
composted rather than landfilled eliminates the equivalent of nearly one ton of carbon-dioxide emissions into
the atmosphere.18
The combination of
avoided emissions
through decreased
need to produce
virgin materials and
through keeping
material out of
landfills is powerful –
from this life-cycle
perspective,
landfilling a ton of
waste leads to 30
times more
greenhouse gas
emissions than does
recycling a ton of
waste.19
7
While NYC commercial waste haulers dispose of the majority of waste in landfills because they are currently the
cheapest short-term option, about 10% of commercial waste is burned in incinerators.20 Often labelled “Waste
to Energy” facilities, incinerators present major environmental hazards to the communities surrounding them as
they burn materials such as paper and plastics that could be cost-effectively recycled, and are an extremely
inefficient and costly way to generate energy.21
An examination of a typical collection truck load from a restaurant route found that 67% was food waste (which
could be composted or anaerobically digested), 20% was cardboard and paper (potentially recyclable or
digestible) and 5% was recyclable beverage containers (which should have been recycled under existing NYC
law). 22
MORE RECYCLING MEANS MORE JOBS
Waste Handling
Process
Jobs per 10,000 Tons
of Waste per Year
Landfilling/Incineration
1
Composting
5
Recycling Sorting
20
Recycling waste creates far more jobs than landfilling or incinerating it. 23 If New York City were to increase its
recycling rate from 24% to 70%, it could create more than 3,000 local jobs processing materials at recycling
facilities. Currently, only about 500-600 of these jobs exist in the city according to the U.S. Census Bureau.24 By
encouraging local and regional development of recycling-reliant manufacturing industries such as recycled
paper mills, we could create an additional 8,000 or more jobs in or near the City.25
8
WHY IS NEW YORK CITY’S
COMMERCIAL RECYCLING RATE SO LOW?
NYC’s commercial waste system forces a short-term outlook on the waste
industry, stifling long-term investments.
NYC waste haulers and facility operators are limited by a
short-term outlook as they scramble for customers, and
their business model is based on trucking garbage to
whichever out-of-state landfills are cheapest for them. A
City law passed in the 1990s to protect customers from an
anti-competitive hauler cartel prohibits haulers from
negotiating waste contracts lasting more than two years.
The unintended consequence of this is that haulers and
the facility operators they rely upon do not have the kind
of stable customer base needed to make long-term
investments in clean trucks and recycling infrastructure.26
T he new S IM S re cyclin g f acility u ses autom ate d
so rte rs to se parate plas tic an d glass in res ide ntial
recyclables . Photo: S IMS M unicipal Re cyclin g
Co rp. N YC
Recent developments in NYC’s recycling programs
demonstrate how the City can create the market
conditions necessary to generate infrastructure investment and better recycling in the commercial sector.
A 20-year RFP and contract to process and resell recyclables collected by DSNY recently led to a $46 million
investment in a state-of-the-art Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) on the Brooklyn waterfront by SIMS Municipal
Recycling.27 In 2013, the plant began processing all of the plastics, metal, and glass in the City’s residential
recycling stream. Because this facility can sort and resell a variety of materials using automated scanning
technology, New York City residents are finally able to recycle a variety of food containers and other rigid plastics
that were previously landfilled.
The long-term SIMS contract gives the City the stability to maintain and expand its recycling programs while
allowing SIMS to meet its operating costs by smoothing out volatility in market prices for recyclable materials.
This is a marked contrast to the commercial recycling sector where a focus on short-term profits leads haulers to
recycle materials only when it is profitable from their perspective and fails to provide the long-term stability
needed for investments in better infrastructure.
9
New York City has similarly used 20-year contracts with waste exporting companies to create investment in rail
transfer facilities that have led to the replacement of long-haul truck export with comparatively efficient train
export of residential waste.
The disincentives to long-term infrastructure investment that exist in our commercial waste system may actually
stall the city’s efforts to recycle commercial food waste. Thousands of commercial kitchens and restaurants in
New York City generate a relatively clean, high volume waste stream with high potential to generate energy via
anaerobic digestion processing. Local legislation scheduled to go into effect in July, 2015 would require these
major food waste generators to separate this waste and contract with a hauler to process it, but the law also
makes this requirement contingent on the existence of sufficient organics recycling capacity within 100 miles of
the City.
Unfortunately, the entire New York City region has much less capacity to recycle food waste than smaller cities
like San Francisco, Seattle, and San Jose, and the handful of currently existing composting and digester facilities
are capable of processing only a small fraction of the organic waste generated by the businesses that the law
would cover.28 Incredibly, the recent shutdown of a single, poorly-managed composting facility in Delaware
may delay or scale back the law’s implementation and the progress of organics recycling in the nation’s biggest
city.29
This woeful lack of infrastructure stems directly from the instability of our commercial waste collection system:
potential developers and financers of organics processing plants require a guaranteed volume of organic
feedstock over a sufficiently long period of time in order to justify the upfront costs of creating diversion
infrastructure. The current system, with its short-term profit structure, simply cannot provide these guarantees.
In order to reduce the tremendous emissions caused by landfilling food waste and to realize long-term savings
from energy and avoided transportation costs, the City will need to create much stronger, long-term incentives
for waste generators, haulers, and investors to make organics recycling a reality.30
BUSINESSES LACK PRICE INCENTIVES TO RECYCLE
Businesses – particularly small businesses – lack clear price incentives to separate recyclable waste, and haulers
are likely to encourage customers only to recycle the portions of their waste stream that are most profitable to
collect, given the lack of infrastructure and monitoring. In New York City’s system, haulers have an incentive to –
and usually do – hide their prices from customers, who cannot easily compare prices from different haulers or
determine a fair price for the recyclable portions of their waste. More than 83% of businesses pay a flat,
monthly rate for garbage services regardless of how much waste they generate, and cannot easily understand
how this price relates to the amount of waste they generate.31‡ Moreover, many businesses are charged the
‡
Problems with price transparency, recycling incentives, and customer service for businesses required to participate in the commercial waste system
will be the focus of a future TDTNYC report.
10
same monthly rate for garbage service regardless of whether they separate recyclables, significantly reducing
the incentives for businesses to properly source-separate materials such as paper, glass, plastics, and metal from
food waste and other contaminants.
A CHAOTIC SYSTEM MAKES RECYCLING ENFORCEMENT DIFFICULT
Enforcement of existing recycling laws is difficult or impossible given the huge number of actors in NYC’s
commercial waste sector. With 260 licensed haulers in total, authorities such as the Business Integrity
Commission (which was created to prosecute corruption and cartel behavior in the private waste industry)
struggle to detect illegal activity such as unlicensed hauling, curbside theft of valuable materials (such as
cardboard), and improper commingling of recyclable and non-recyclable waste.32
New York City’s
existing recycling law
has been ineffective in
increasing recycling
rates. When enacted in
1992, the law was
intended to ensure that
50% of the waste
stream collected by
private carters would
be recycled – a goal the
city is far from
achieving.33 Rather
than requiring private
haulers to educate
customers on how to
maximize recyclability
of their waste, the law put the onus on businesses to separate materials (although this is almost never
enforced). Finally, the law designates as recyclable only those materials for which the costs of recycling are
equal to or less than the costs of disposal, from the haulers’ perspective – a requirement that ignores the
environmental and health costs of exporting and disposing waste.
11
NEW YORK CITY’S COMMERCIAL
WASTE COLLECTION SYSTEM IS
GROSSLY INEFFICIENT & HIGHLY POLLUTING
Six nights a week, an army of 4,200 trucks and more than 5,000 workers is deployed by private hauling
companies to collect waste from NYC’s offices, restaurants, factories, and retail stores.34 While this private
system removes thousands of tons of waste from our streets every night, it does so in a disorganized and highly
inefficient manner.35
About 260 haulers hold licenses to collect commercial waste in NYC, with the 20 largest haulers dominating the
market and servicing 80% of commercial
customers.36 Many of these haulers’ customers are
spread across several boroughs and trucks
throughout the City travel on inefficient and
overlapping routes.
THE NU M BER O F COM M ERCIAL CAR TER S
S ERVIC ING BUSINESS CUS TOMERS IN
S ELECT NY C COMMUN ITY DISTRICTS
DISTRICT
MA-1
MA-5
BX-2
BX-4
BX-8
BX-12
BK-4
BK-9
BK-14
QN-1
QN-6
QN-10
QN-14
SI-2
SI-3
CUSTOMERS
2787
13931
1432
1487
930
1691
1363
792
1442
4771
1806
1471
812
1772
1474
inefficient routes.
CARTERS
68
79
39
38
30
43
49
43
59
69
48
44
26
31
25
Image: DSNY/Halcrow Engineers, 2012
DSNY’s 2012 study found at least 25 haulers operating in every
community district it studied, and 79 different haulers collecting
waste in midtown Manhattan alone.37 In 2014, TDTNYC members
surveyed 580 businesses along commercial stretches in all five
boroughs to gain a street-level understanding of commercial waste
collection. Our survey revealed individual blocks in several
neighborhoods where collection trucks from 8-10 different hauling
companies serviced businesses, and one multi-block commercial
strip serviced by 22 different hauling companies. The constant
struggle to gain and retain customers leads haulers to operate
12
For example, a typical team of two workers operating a truck might collect waste from 70 different restaurants in
one night. While a dense customer base would allow these workers to fill their trucks from restaurants in a
single neighborhood, in NYC’s open system these workers are likely to drive across multiple neighborhoods and
even boroughs to collect the same amount of waste from the same number of restaurants.
"There is no route that makes sense in the entire
industry. Where I might have a stop here, I don't have
another stop for half-a-mile. And then in that half a mile,
you have six other garbage companies. You just keep
multiplying that all night. The route is not consolidated
— it’s spaced out. I do about 70 miles a day.”
— Allan Henry, Private Sanitation Driver
CLUSTERING OF TRANSFER STATIONS
CONTRIBUTES TO INEFFICIENCY
With the phasing out of the Fresh Kills landfill in the 1990s, clusters of private waste transfer stations designed
to export garbage to out-of-state landfills arose in North Brooklyn, the South Bronx, and Southeast Queens,
which together process 75% of the waste handled in New York City today, as well as the Brooklyn
neighborhoods of Sunset Park and Red Hook which are home to major commercial waste transfer stations.
At these transfer stations, waste is put on long-haul vehicles —
mostly trucks — for export to landfills and incinerators across
the Eastern U.S. Less than 6 percent of NYC’s waste stays in
New York State; instead it travels an average of 272 miles and
largely ends up in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia, with
some of it traveling as far as South Carolina.38
Data obtained from the Business Integrity Commission shows
how this clustering of waste facilities adds to the inefficiency
of the commercial collection system, and results in private
garbage trucks driving thousands of excess miles every night
to reach their designated transfer station to dump, often
bypassing closer stations along their routes.
FLA GS DEPIC T PRI VAT E T RA NS FER S TA TION S
HAN DLIN G PUTR ES CIBLE, C ON ST RUC TION ,
AN D FI LL M AT ERI AL. SOUR CE: HABI TAT M AP
13
The maps above depict customer locations for 3 of the 14 transfer stations currently handling commercial
putrescible waste in NYC. They show that regardless of where waste is generated in the city, it is trucked to
transfer stations primarily concentrated in three overburdened communities. For example, waste collected as
far away as Coney Island and Inwood is trucked to North Brooklyn, waste collected in Eastern Queens and North
Brooklyn is trucked to the South Bronx, and waste collected in Sunset Park and downtown Manhattan is trucked
to Southeast Queens. Even in ZIP codes containing large numbers of waste transfer stations, a substantial amount of waste is trucked
to distant transfer stations by private haulers. For example, while the North Brooklyn neighborhoods of
Williamsburg and Bushwick are home to the city’s largest cluster of transfer stations, 30% of businesses in this
area have their waste trucked elsewhere – to the Bronx, Sunset Park, or even New Jersey. Similarly, 19% of
South Bronx businesses have their waste trucked elsewhere, despite the presence of large transfer stations.
14
In a system with more than 150,000 participating businesses, these excess miles add
up:
The commercial
waste fleet drives
at least 50 million
miles per year in
New York City, and
operates far less
efficiently than
DSNY, which, as
the exclusive
hauler of
residential waste,
can use the most
efficient possible
collection routes.
Halcrow estimates that
commercial haulers
drive about 12 miles to collect each ton of waste (including recycling). In contrast, DSNY fleet reports produce
estimates of about 4 miles per ton of waste and recyclables collected.39
DSNY’s 2012 study found that the
number of miles driven per ton of
waste collected varied by 65% across
a sample of three similarly-sized
waste companies depending on the
locations of their customers, transfer
stations, and truck yards. With a
high level of redundancy among
carters, even the most efficient of
these companies is not nearly as
efficient as it could be with a
geographically dense customer
base. 40
15
NYC’S COMMERCIAL WASTE SYSTEM HARMS
NEW YORKERS’ PUBLIC HEALTH, PARTICULARLY
IN OVERBURDENED COMMUNITIES
The negative daily impacts of NYC’s sprawling, inefficiently operated fleet of 4,000 diesel trucks are felt by all
New Yorkers, and are particularly acute in the low-income communities and communities of color where private
waste facilities and trucks are concentrated.
POLLUTION
Currently, only 10%
of NYC’s 4,281
commercial
putrescible garbage
trucks meet 2007
EPA emission
standards – meaning
that the majority of
commercial waste
trucks on our streets
emit significantly
greater quantities of
harmful particulate
matter and nitrogen
oxide compared to
modern collection
vehicles.41
Old waste trucks are common on NYC streets, and emit
far more pollution than new models.
While a new law requires haulers to update their fleets by the year 2020, implementation of the law may allow
haulers to use less effective retrofit technologies for older trucks.42 The law does not require waste haulers to
implement alternative fuels such as compressed natural gas or electric trucks, which can significantly reduce the
pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and noise caused by diesel trucks.
Diesel emissions have dozens of negative public health effects. The particulate matter emitted by diesel trucks
harms lung function, and is linked to the development and exacerbation of asthma and other illnesses.43 The
World Health Organization recently declared diesel exhaust a human carcinogen.44
16
PEDESTRIAN AND CYCLIST SAFETY
Waste collection trucks are particularly hazardous to pedestrians and cyclists. This is due, in part, to the fact that
under the current chaotic commercial system, drivers are pressured to complete their sprawling routes as
quickly as possible. DSNY’s 2012 study found a prevalence of “…reverse moves, illegal right turns
on red, and even the blatant disregard of one-way street restrictions” by commercial waste
carters.45 Unsafe driving practices by waste trucks have contributed to dozens of New York City pedestrian and
cyclist deaths in recent years, and commercial waste trucks are among the most dangerous vehicles on our
streets in terms of numbers of fatalities per mile.46
Unsafe things I see in the industry are trucks speeding,
turning like crazy on the corners, coming on the opposite side
of the street, taking red lights and blowing stop signs — those
are things that are very dangerous. Another problem is driving
on the opposite side — going opposite direction to the traffic.
That happens in Manhattan and throughout the whole city and
we have had accidents because of that. And many of those
companies force the workers to do that. How can you do
500-700 stops at night while observing the
proper laws and rules of
traffic and speed? It's impossible.
— Plinio Cruz, Private Sanitation Driver
NOISE
Diesel collection trucks can emit up to 100 decibels of noise – the
sonic equivalent of a jackhammer or a jet flyover.47 Noise from
collection is a concern for all New Yorkers,48 and is acute in
communities with clusters of transfer stations. Chronic noise
exposure is linked to insomnia, stress, heart disease, and hearing
loss.49
ROAD DAMAGE
A commercial waste truck runs a red light
on Canal Street.
Each of these trucks weighs about 33,000 pounds empty50 and causes pavement damage equivalent to 1,429
cars.51 New York City taxpayers bear the substantial cost of repairing the resulting damage to our streets and
highways.
17
A HANDFUL OF LOW-INCOME COMMUNITIES AND
COMMUNITIES OF COLOR BEAR THE BRUNT OF
OUR COMMERCIAL WASTE SYSTEM
The numerous harms of NYC’s
commercial waste
management are felt most
acutely in low-income
communities of color where
private waste transfer stations
and truck yards are heavily
clustered.
Trucks collecting commercial
waste all over the city
converge on North Brooklyn,
the South Bronx, and
Southeast Queens every day
and night, as do the longhaul trucks that export this
garbage to landfills and
incinerators.
SHARE OF PUTRESCIBLE AND
CONSTRUCTION WASTE HANDLED IN THREE
COMMUNITIES
REST OF NYC
25%
NORTH
BROOKLYN
34%
SOUTHEAST
QUEENS
9%
SOUTH BRONX
32%
Garbage trucks are a significant contributor to the high levels of diesel truck
traffic and poor air quality associated with these and other industrial facilities in
these communities.
For example, a traffic study conducted at morning and evening rush hours in North Brooklyn found that
garbage trucks constituted 30-50% of truck traffic at various intersections, many of
which are in close proximity to homes and schools.52
18
Communities living, working, and going to school near truck routes and waste facilities bear substantial health
burdens associated with poor air quality. The South Bronx, which hosts fourteen waste transfer stations,53 has
the highest asthma rates in the state, and residents of the Bronx in general suffer the highest rate of deaths by
asthma in the state.54 Studies of South Bronx school children have demonstrated that exposure to components
of diesel soot from living in proximity to truck routes and highways is directly linked to acute respiratory
problems such as asthma attacks.55
Idling trucks next to a park in the Bronx.
Photo: Sustainable South Bronx
Waste trucks often drive through residential streets
in overburdened communities. Photo: Joe Moretti
“Living and working in a community that has 14 waste transfer
stations on top of a prison, on top of 15,000 trucks for a food
market, is oppressive. It’s gasping for fresh air. It’s noise
pollution. It’s impinging on your feeling of security, your feeling
of just happiness. It’s about ‘Can my kid breathe?’ ‘Can I
breathe?’ ‘Can we have a healthy and happy family here in the
places we have to live?’ Environmental justice is not an option for
us. It is a life and death issue.”
— Kellie Terry, Hunts Point, The Bronx
The men and women who work in the private sanitation industry also bear outsized health risks associated with
antiquated diesel engines, poorly designed infrastructure, and inefficient truck routes. Because they work 8-12
hours per day in close proximity to trucks and machinery, truck operators are likely to experience greatly
elevated exposure to toxic components of diesel exhaust.56 These exposures are added to the daily threats of
injury and death that make sanitation work one of the five deadliest jobs in the U.S according to the Bureau of
Labor Statistics.57 Notably, exposure to pollution is even higher for the many private sanitation workers who
experience it on the job and also live in the communities where waste facilities, truck routes, and other
industrial uses are concentrated.
19
SOLUTIONS: TAMING
THE GARBAGE “WILD WEST”
New data strongly underscores the fact that our commercial waste system is broken. The 5.5 million tons of
solid waste generated by New York City businesses each year are handled by an outdated, haphazard system
that was never designed to meet our urgent need to maximize recycling, and has not been held accountable for
its local and global impacts. By almost every relevant measure – efficiency, public health, climate impacts,
equity, and safety – the current system fails our city.
Fortunately, NYC can benefit from the experiences of other innovative cities that have adopted a proven
approach to commercial waste management. Often called “franchising,” this approach gives haulers exclusive
collection rights in defined zones of a city through a competitive bidding process that can be leveraged to
produce enforceable commitments on recycling, working conditions, efficiency, pollution reduction, and equity.
INCREASING RECYCLING
Seattle is one example of a city that has successfully used exclusive waste collection zones and long-term (11-15
year) franchise agreements to continually improve its commercial recycling rate. Seattle’s system incentivizes
both customers and hauling companies to maximize source-separation of recyclable waste. Businesses pay
significantly lower monthly prices for compost service than they do for garbage service58 and receive free limited
collection of dry recyclables from the city,59 while the two hauling companies that service Seattle’s businesses
receive bonuses for maximizing business participation in the composting program and for reducing the amount
of garbage disposed in landfills annually.60
Since Seattle began its commercial composting program in 2006,
food and yard waste recycling has improved the City’s overall
recycling rate from 50% to 63%, and new mandatory composting
laws promise to drive this rate even higher in the near future. 61
20
70.0%
SEATTLE COMMERCIAL REC YCLING TRENDS
Annual Commercial Waste (TONS)
200,000
63%
61%
150,000
65.0%
61%
59%
60.0%
100,000
50,000
0
52%
2006
55%
55%
2008
2009
Commercial Recycling Rate
250,000
55.0%
53%
2007
2010
2011
2012
2013
Commercial Disposed Garbage
Commercial Non-Organic Recycling
Commercial Composted
Commercial Recycling Rate
50.0%
San Jose recently transitioned from an open-market commercial waste system like NYC’s to an exclusive zone
approach and Los Angeles is in the process of doing so, making their experiences especially relevant. These
large cities both struggled with the same problems NYC faces: low business recycling rates, inefficient
collection systems, and a lack of transparent data on amounts of waste generated and recycled by haulers
serving the business sector.
After announcing competitive RFPs for 15-year contracts to collect and process all commercial waste generated
in the city, San Jose was able to attract investment in state-of-the-art infrastructure that has eliminated the
practice of direct disposal at the landfill. Impressively, this new system tripled the commercial diversion rate
within the first year of implementation:62
21
90
80
San Jose Target
LA Target
70
60
50
40
US Recycling
Average
30
NYC Commercial (2009)
LA Commercial (2010)
20
10
0
San Jose
Commercial
Baseline (2010)
2009
2010
San Jose
Franchise Starts
(2012)
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
With the guarantee of a long-term, reliable stream of commercial recyclables and organic food waste, San Jose
successfully leveraged substantial private investment to construct a state-of-the-art recyclables sorting facility
and an anaerobic digestion and composting plant specifically designed to process organic food waste from the
city’s commercial sector. When completed, this plant will be able to process over 700 tons per day of food waste
(an amount greater than the total organics recycling capacity of the NYC region), create 1.6 megawatts of
electricity, and produce a compost-like end product which can be sold as organic fertilizer.63
Meanwhile, under their agreement with the city, San Jose’s exclusive
hauling company is required to meet rigorous recycling targets,
provide all businesses with consistent recycling education and
support, and charge customers standardized rates.
The city’s ability to control the destinations and quality of the waste
streams produced by the approximately 8,000 businesses in the
commercial sector has been key to realizing rapid development of
Sa n Jose ’s new a na er obi c dige stion a nd
recycling and green energy facilities. City of San Jose staff involved
composti ng fa ci li ty wi ll be a bl e to proce ss
in creating this new system have stressed that exclusive collection
270, 000 tons pe r year of c ommerc ial
orga ni c wa ste.
zones are fundamental to this success: “Haulers can’t finance
P hoto: Ze ro Was te Energy De si gn
infrastructure development to recycle without a guaranteed
customer base and revenue stream…because these facilities are very expensive.”64
22
Los Angeles recently decided to adopt an exclusive zone system and is currently evaluating competing
proposals for collection from eleven different zones designated by the city. LA is requiring private haulers to
submit rigorous recycling plans for each zone, and at a minimum these bids must include a plan to reduce
tonnages of disposed waste by 63% by 2025, and include a plan to collect and recycle source-separated organic
waste and recyclables from each business.65
Anticipating the guarantees of stable quantities of uncontaminated food waste that will be generated by these
requirements, organics processing companies have already begun to explore investments in the Los Angeles
area and are partnering with haulers on their proposals.66
ELIMINATING OVERLAPPING TRUCK ROUTES
In cities the size of Los Angeles and New York, which have
similar land areas, exclusive collection zones can
significantly reduce the pollution and negative health
impacts of waste collection by requiring haulers to create
rational routes to serve efficiently located customer bases.
As part of an environmental impact assessment of its new
commercial waste system, Los Angeles conducted a
detailed analysis of truck miles driven under its current
open-market system versus the proposed new exclusive
zone system and concluded that the City could reduce
truck miles traveled by 16% by implementing
rational commercial collection zones
(pictured at left), an absolute savings of 1.7
million collection truck miles per year. 67
Even with the requirement that haulers do separate
collections for source-separated organic waste and
recyclables – intended to minimize cross-contamination
and maximize recycling – the City expects to reduce truck miles by 2% (180,000 miles per year) compared to the
current system.
The City’s analysis determined that requiring separate collection of organics and recyclables under an open
system with inefficient overlapping routes would expose Angelenos to 5 million more truck miles every year
than providing the same service under its new, zoned system. The exclusive collection zones are fundamental
to a high-performance recycling system, and will enable Los Angeles to substantially boost commercial
diversion rates while still reducing the pollution, expense and other negative impacts of collection truck traffic.
23
CONCLUSION:
NEW YORK CITY AT 70% RECYCLING
Leading cities like San Jose, Seattle, and Los Angeles show us that with sufficient political will, diverse urban
economies can build high-performance commercial waste systems. New York City has taken a crucial first step
by adopting a goal to reduce emissions 80% by 2050 and recognizing that relatively quick transformational
changes in key sectors, including solid waste, will be required to attain it. Improving our 25% recycling rate
for putrescible commercial waste to 70% within the next few years is an ambitious, but attainable goal that we
must achieve to hit our larger climate change targets. Doing so would have a major impact on greenhouse gas
emissions and would make New York a leader among global cities seeking to transform their economies
through investment in climate change prevention and mitigation. It would also provide immediate local
benefits to NYC businesses, workers, and communities. In the long-term, we will need to go even further to
complete our path to an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions - we will need to reduce consumption and
recycle nearly all of our residential and commercial waste.
A commercial waste system redesigned to meet these short and long-term goals will need to include:
•
•
•
•
Major investments in infrastructure for sorting traditional recyclables (high-technology, highvolume materials recovery facilities (MRFs) designed to separate plastics, glass, metal, and paper with
minimal cross-contamination).
Major investments in organics recycling (anaerobic digestion and/or composting facilities
that can produce fertilizer and clean energy from commercial food waste sources such as restaurants,
food processors, and markets).
A collection system that minimizes truck miles through geographically dense collection
zones, and rationally and equitably located waste processing facilities.
A reporting system that generates reliable data on the amounts of waste generated,
recycled, landfilled, and incinerated, enabling New York City to ensure compliance and accurately
assess our performance with respect to greenhouse gas emissions and other key indicators.
While a 21st century commercial waste system will need to reflect the unique constraints and opportunities of
our urban geography, such as scarcity of land for siting new infrastructure, and extremely dense commercial
districts, the key features of the exclusive collection zone systems adopted by leading cities would offer
enormous benefits to New Yorkers:
•
Trucks from multiple companies would no longer leap-frog each other every night to collect waste.
These gains in efficiency would in turn enable us to maximize the recyclability of our paper and food
24
waste through source separation, while simultaneously realizing decreases in truck traffic.
Communities throughout the city – and especially those near truck routes and waste facilities – would
benefit from reduced traffic, noise, and safety hazards.
•
•
Haulers would compete for the right to serve customers in designated zones via a bidding process.
Successful bidders would be required to meet rigorous environmental targets, maintain high-road
labor standards, and charge affordable, transparent prices that reward businesses for waste reduction
and recycling. In return, the bidder would benefit significantly from a large, stable, and dense base of
customers. By extending exclusive collection rights over a number of years (typically 10-15), the city
could require haulers and their bidding partners to make long-term investments in better recycling
infrastructure, cleaner trucks, and better working conditions for employees.
To meet recycling targets, haulers would be required and incentivized to provide ongoing education to
business customers about how to maximize the recyclability of waste, and haulers would in turn submit
detailed, verifiable data to the City on amounts of waste collected, recycled, and disposed. Our City’s
oversight system could be reoriented toward real-time monitoring of recycling performance, customer
education, and waste prevention programs.
Given the tremendous volume of waste generated by New York City businesses, a 70% commercial recycling
system would redirect massive flows of materials and energy away from landfills and incinerators and into our
regional economy. This would mean that: 68
•
More than 500,000 tons per year of organic food waste currently disposed could be anaerobically
digested to produce a clean source of biogas for New York’s energy grid and/or composted to create
organic fertilizer. Composting 70% of our commercial food waste would eliminate the equivalent of
260,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year.69
•
Over 160,000 tons of office paper and 165,000 tons of cardboard currently disposed would be
recycled, saving over a 100 billion gallons of water, and saving enough energy to power 160,000
American homes for one year.70 This improvement in paper and cardboard recycling would eliminate 1
million tons of CO2 per year, equivalent to the emissions of 220,000 passenger cars.
•
Overall, our city would lower carbon emissions by 2-4 million tons of CO2 per year, the
equivalent of taking 400,000 – 800,000 cars off of the road.
Private sanitation trucks currently travel more than 50 million miles per year on our local streets and highways.
By rationalizing our chaotic collection system, we can eliminate millions of these unnecessary miles, and ensure
that the savings from transforming this wasteful system are used to pay for a cleaner and safer commercial
waste system.
25
APPENDIX A:
COMMUNITY HAULER SURVEY AREAS
TOTAL NUMBER OF BUSINESSES SURVEYED (SUMMER, 2014): 756
4 8 9 10 11 2 3 7 1 12 13 5 1
Hunts Point
2
S oundvie w
3
Mo rrisania
4
Me lrose
5
Williams burg
6
S unse t Park
7
Mo rn in gside Heigh ts
8
Uppe r East S ide
9
Midto wn
10 He rald S quare
11 Financial Dis trict
6 14 12 As toria
13 Jackson He ights
14 Graniteville
26
ENDNOTES
1
See City of New York, “New York City’s Pathway to Deep Carbon Reductions, Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability,” 2013.
Available at: http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/planyc2030/pdf/nyc_pathways.pdf
2
City of New York, “PlaNYC 2014 Progress Report.” Available at:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/planyc2030/downloads/pdf/140422_PlaNYCP-Report_FINAL_Web.pdf
3
New York City Mayor’s Office, “Inventory of New York City Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” December 2013. Available at:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/planyc/downloads/pdf/publications/NYC_GHG_Inventory_2013.pdf
4
City of New York, “New York City’s Pathways to Deep Carbon Reductions,” p106.
5
Halcrow Engineers, PC, “New York City Comprehensive Commercial Waste System Analysis and Study, Technical Memo 1a,”Aug 2012. Memo 1a at p. 39. (hereinafter
“Halcrow Study”)
6
DSNY’s 2004 comprehensive commercial waste study estimated diversion at 29%. The PlaNYC update released in 2011 cited a commercial waste recycling rate of
40%, but did not include methodology or explain which waste streams were included in the estimate. Available at: http://smedia.nyc.gov/agencies/planyc2030/pdf/planyc_2011_planyc_full_report.pdf, p. 137.
7
Source: 2013 and 2014 transfer station and recycling facility annual reports filed by integrated hauling companies including Action Environmental and Mr. T
Carting/Hi-Tech Resource Recovery. Analysis of tons received, tons disposed, and tons recovered/recycled shows that only 10-13% of waste processed by these
companies is recycled. Facility reports are available at: ftp://ftp.dec.ny.gov/dshm/SWMF/
8
Halcrow Study, Memo 1c.
9 The estimate is 26% if an estimate of commercial and residential landscaping waste is included in the calculation.
10
See endnote 7.
11
Halcrow Study, Memo 1c, Table 15.
12
The DSNY/Halcrow study does not include an estimate of food waste currently recycled by composting or digestion, other than Fat/Oil/Grease recycling which tends to
be done by specialty recyclers. Some NYC transfer stations report delivering separated food waste to compost facilities in annual reports submitted to NYS Dept. of
Environmental Conservation, but do not specify whether these tonnages were from residential or commercial waste streams. The amounts of compost reported by these
transfer stations are minimal, ranging from .2% to 3.5% of total waste tons received. DEC transfer station reports are available at: ftp://ftp.dec.ny.gov/dshm/SWMF/
13
Halcrow Study, Memo 1c, Table 11.
14 New York City Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, “Sustainability and Solid Waste: Doubling New York’s Recycling Rate by 2017,” 2013.
Available at:
http://waste.ccac-knowledge.net/sites/default/files/CCAC_images/City%20Assessment%20-%20New%20York%20City,%20USA.pdf
15
US Environmental Protection Agency, “Overview of Greenhouse Gases,” Available at: http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html Accessed on April
8, 2015.
16
US Environmental Protection Agency, “Paper Recycling,” Available at: http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/paper/basics/ Accessed on April 8, 2015.
17
US Environmental Protection Agency Region 10, “Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions Through Recycling and Composting,” May 2011. Available at:
http://www.epa.gov/region10/pdf/climate/wccmmf/Reducing_GHGs_through_Recycling_and_Composting.pdf
18
Estimate derived from comparisons of landfilling and composting food waste using the US EPA WARM Model. Available
athttp://epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/tools/warm/Warm_Form.html
19
Tellus Institute with Sound Resource Management, “More Jobs, Less Pollution: Growing the Recycling Economy in the U.S,” 2011, p46. Available at:
http://www.tellus.org/publications/files/More_Jobs_Less_Pollution.pdf
20
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Transfer Station Annual Reports for 2013. Tonnages sent to landfill and incinerator destinations were
analyzed for four major NYC putrescible transfer stations which handled 100% commercial waste in 2013.
21
Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, “Myths vs. Facts about Waste to Energy,” February, 2012. Available at: http://www.noburn.org/downloads/Incinerator_Myths_vs_Facts%20Feb2012.pdf
22
RW Beck for NYC Economic Development Corporation, “Hunts Point Anaerobic Digestion Feasibility Study,” July 2010, p. 2-12. Available at:
http://www.nycedc.com/sites/default/files/filemanager/Projects/Hunts_Point_Peninsula/HuntsPointAnaerobicDigestionFeasibilityStudy.pdf
23
Tellus Institute with Sound Resource Management, “More Jobs, Less Pollution: Growing the Recycling Economy in the U.S.” 2011.
24
US Census Bureau, “American Community Survey, County Business Patterns,” 2012. Available at: http://www.census.gov/econ/cbp/
25
Estimates of jobs per ton of waste processed are from the Tellus Institute report (see Endnote 19). Estimates of tons disposed and recycled are from Halcrow
Engineers, Technical Memorandum 1c, Tables 5, 12, and 15.
26
NYC Business Integrity Commission, “Customer’s Bill of Rights.” Available at: http://www.nyc.gov/html/bic/html/trade_waste/customer_info_rights.shtml
27
New York City Economic Development Corporation, “Sims Municipal Recycling Facility,” January 8, 2015. Available at: http://www.nycedc.com/project/simsmunicipal-recycling-facility, Accessed April 8, 2015.
28
Halcrow Engineers estimates that NYC’s food and accommodation sector alone produces 428,000 tons per year of organics. Current capacity at regional facilities is
less than 150,000 tons per year. See Benjamin Miller and Juliette Spertus, “Encouraging the Development of Organics Processing Infrastructure for New York City’s
Waste Stream,” New York League of Conservation Voters, October 2012. Available at: http://www.nylcv.org/sites/nylcv.civicactions.net/files/Organics_White_Paper.pdf
27
See also RW Beck, “Hunts Point Anaerobic Digestion Feasibility Study,” July 2010. Available at:
http://www.nycedc.com/sites/default/files/filemanager/Projects/Hunts_Point_Peninsula/HuntsPointAnaerobicDigestionFeasibilityStudy.pdf
29
Erik Engquist, “Recycling Reprieve for Food Businesses.” Crains Business Insider, Dec. 9, 2014. Available at:
http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20141209/BLOGS04/141209844/recycling-reprieve-for-food-businesses
30
The City has estimated that anaerobic digestion would save $60/ton compared to landfilling organic waste when energy production and future rising costs of landfills
are taken into account. “New York City’s Pathways to Deep Carbon Reductions,” p. 107
31
Price Waterhouse Coopers, LLP. Unpublished Study of Price Regulation of New York City Commercial Waste Hauling for New York City Economic Development
Corporation. September 26, 2014.
32
John Metcalf, “Inside the Surprisingly Lucrative World of Cardboard Theft,” CityLab, July 13, 2012. Available at: http://www.citylab.com/work/2012/07/insidesurprisingly-lucrative-world-cardboard-theft/2761/
33
New York City Administrative Code, Title 16-306 “Private Carter-Collected Waste”
34
Licensed truck figure from MJ Bradley and Associates, “New York City Commercial Refuse Truck Age-Out Analysis,” September, 2013. Available at
http://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/EDF-BIC%20Refuse%20Truck%20Analysis%20092713.pdf. List of trade waste haulers licensed by BIC is from
http://www.nyc.gov/html/bic/downloads/pdf/pr/licapproved.pdf.
35
There is evidence that NYC has never had a very efficient private waste system. As long ago as the early 1990s, the Dinkins administration recognized that in addition
to high prices, organized crime cartels in the commercial waste sector created a ”crazy-quilt system in which you can have a dozen [haulers] operating inefficiently in one
block.” See Selwyn Raab, “Plan to Revise Trash Pickup for Businesses,” New York Times, March 5, 1992.
36
TDTNY Analysis of the 2014 BIC Customer Registry, obtained via Freedom of InformationL request.
37
Businesses are required by law to display a window decal showing the name of the BIC-licensed hauler collecting their waste and/or recyclables. TDTNYC surveyors
were able to inspect these stickers to determine the number of haulers operating on each block in commercial strips throughout the City.
38
TDTNYC analysis of disposal destinations for major transfer stations using 2012 NYS Department of Environmental Conservation Waste Transfer Station Annual
Reports. Reports available at: ftp://ftp.dec.ny.gov/dshm/SWMF/
39
Halcrow estimates of commercial miles per ton range from 11.9 to 19.0 depending on haulers and computer models of routes (See Halcrow Study, Memo 3, Tables 1
and 2.) Notably, hauling companies refused to share GPS or mileage data which would have allowed direct comparisons. An alternative estimate of commercial
efficiency can be developed from MJ Bradley’s 2013 study of the commercial waste fleet age. With each truck driving an estimated 12,000 miles per year, total fleet
mileage would be 51 million miles per year, yielding about 9.3 miles driven per ton. MJ Bradley and Associates, “New York City Commercial Refuse Truck Age-Out
Analysis,” September 2013.
Estimates of DSNY miles per ton are derived from publicly available fleet reports available at http://www.nyc.gov/html/ops/downloads/pdf/fleet_report.pdf
and http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcas/downloads/pdf/fleet/fleet_local_law_38_DSNY_2012_final_report_3_25_2013.pdf
40
Halcrow Study Memo 3 at p. 11.
41
MJ Bradley and Associates, “New York City Commercial Refuse Truck Age-Out Analysis,” September, 2013.
42
New York City Local Law 145 of 2013.
43
Jerrett M, Shankardass K, Berhane K, Gauderman WJ, Kunzli N, Avol E, et al, “Traffic-related air pollution and asthma onset in children: A prospective cohort study with
individual exposure measurement.” Environmental Health Perspectives, 2008; 116(10): 1433-1438. See also: Kim JJ, Huen, K, Adams S, Smorodinsky S, Hoats A,
Malig B, et al. Residential traffic and children's respiratory health. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2008; 116(9): 1274-1279.
44
American Cancer Society, “World Health Organization Says Diesel Exhaust Causes Cancer,” June 15, 2012. Available at: http://www.cancer.org/cancer/news/worldhealth-organization-says-diesel-exhaust-causes-cancer
45
Halcrow Study.
46
Charles Komanoff, “See a Pattern of Deadly Dump Trucks? Don’t Bother Federal Safety Officials.” Streetsblog.org. 13 July 2010. Available at:
http://www.streetsblog.org/2010/07/13/see-a-pattern-of-deadly-dump-trucks-don%E2%80%99t-bother-federal-safety-officials/.
47
Inform, Inc,“New York City’s Commercial Waste Hauling Fleets: An Opportunity for New York City to Ensure Cleaner, Quieter Waste Collection Operations.” Feb 2006,
p. 8. Available at: http://www.informinc.org/reportpdfs/st/INFORM%20NYC%20Commercial%20Waste%20Haulers%20Report%28final%29.pdf
48
In 2012, more than 700 Manhattan residents called 311 to complain about garbage truck noise. See:
http://karlsluis.com/newyorkcitymaps/nyc_noisemap_1.png
49
Hammer et al, “Environmental Noise Pollution in the United States: Developing an Effective Public Health Response,” Environmental Health Perspectives, February
2014. Available at: http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/1307272/
50
Inform, Inc. “New York City’s Commercial Waste Hauling Fleets: An Opportunity for New York City to Ensure Cleaner, Quieter Waste Collection Operations.” Feb 2006.
Available at: http://www.informinc.org/reportpdfs/st/INFORM%20NYC%20Commercial%20Waste%20Haulers%20Report%28final%29.pdf
51
Washtenaw County, “Washtenaw County Recycles: Residential Solid Waste Profile & Assessment Report,” May 2005. p12. Available at:
http://www.ewashtenaw.org/government/departments/environmental_health/recycling_home_toxics/solid-waste/profile_and_assessment_report/sw_report.pdf.
52
Williamsburg/Greenpoint OUTRAGE, “Truck Traffic and Air Quality Project,” 2009. Available at: http://outragenbk.org/wpcontent/uploads/pdf/OUTRAGE_Truck_Traffic_and_Air_Quality_Full_Report.pdf
53
The 14 South Bronx transfer stations include facilities processing Construction and Demolition and Fill material. Additionally, there are several recycling facilities in
the South Bronx. All of these sites contribute to negative local health and safety impacts by concentrating diesel truck traffic in the South Bronx.
54
New York State Comptroller’s Office, “The Prevalence and Cost of Asthma in New York State,” 2014. Available at:
http://www.osc.state.ny.us/reports/economic/asthma_2014.pdf
55
Spira-Cohen, et al, “Personal Exposures to traffic-related air pollution and acute respiratory health among Bronx schoolchildren with asthma.” Environmental Health
Perspectives, 20111; 119(4) 559-565. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3080941/
28
56
Natural Resources Defense Council, “Truck Drivers Face Elevated Health Risks from Diesel Pollution,” December, 2007. Available at:
http://www.nrdc.org/health/effects/driving/driving.pdf.
57
Jacquelyn Smith, “The Ten Deadliest Jobs in America,” Business Insider, December 5, 2014. Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com/most-dangerous-jobs-inamerica-2014-12#
58
Seattle Public Utilities, “2014 Organics Report.” Available at: http://www.seattle.gov/Util/cs/groups/public/@spu/@garbage/documents/webcontent/01_030055.pdf
59
Seattle Public Utilities, “2014 Recycling Report.” Available at: http://www.seattle.gov/Util/cs/groups/public/@spu/@garbage/documents/webcontent/01_030056.pdf
60
City of Seattle, “Solid Waste Collection and Transfer Contract Between City of Seattle and Cleanscapes, Inc.,” Sections 800 and 845. Available at:
http://www.seattle.gov/util/cs/groups/public/@spu/@garbage/documents/webcontent/spu01_005944.pdf
61
TDTNYC analysis of Seattle Public Utilities Recycling and Organics Reports for 2006-2014.
62
Sources: Quarterly recycling reports and direct communication with San Jose Environmental Services Department (2014 data were unaudited by the city as of
publication.)
63
Nora Goldstein, “Creating Infrastructure for Commercial Waste Diversion,” BioCycle, August 2011. Avilable at:
http://www.greenwaste.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/ZWED_BioCycle_Organics%20Processing_Part%20II_August%202011.pdf; US Environmental Protection Agency,”
EPA, San Jose, Recycler celebrate food waste to energy conversion,” November 2014. Available at:
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/4AA0D04C1225418785257D9B0060224B
64
The Organic Stream, “Lessons Learned From San Jose, CA,” October 20, 2014. Available at: http://www.organicstream.org/2014/10/20/lessons-learned-from-sanjose-ca-building-anaerobic-digestion-facilities-for-municipal-organics/
65
Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation, “RFP: City-Wide Exclusive Franchise System for Municipal Solid Waste Collection and Handling,” June 11, 2014, Appendix 1.4.
66
Partnership for Working Families and New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, conversations with various anaerobic digestion facility developers, January 2015.
67
Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation, “Draft Environmental Impact Statement, City-Wide Exclusive Franchise System For Municipal Solid Waste Collection and Handling,”
November 21, 2013. Table 3.1.4-4, p. 3-68.
68
GHG figures and equivalences in this section were calculated using EPA’s WARM Model with inputs from Halcrow Study memo 1c, Table 5 “Materials Currently
Diverted Mass Flow Analysis” and Table 15 “Tonnages Currently Disposed Suitable for Diversion Efforts.” The EPA WARM calculator is available at:
http://epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/tools/warm/Warm_Form.html
69
The EPA’s WARM model only estimates the comparative GHG impacts of composting, landfilling, and incinerating food waste. Few life-cycle analyses of anaerobic
digestion and composting have been completed; some facilities such as the ZWED plant in San Jose use both processes.
70
US Environmental Protection Agency, “Paper Recycling,” Available at: http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/paper/basics/
29

Report - Transform Don`t Trash NYC

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