Bloomberg gives thumbs up to food waste collection
NYC mayor calls for ban on polystyrene foam
- February 21, 2013
- By Jeremy Carroll
Courtesy, New York City mayor's office New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg gives the crowd a thumbs up during his last State of the City address Feb. 14 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. During the speech, Bloomberg pushed for various recycling initiatives, including a curbside food waste collection program. He also called for a ban on polystyrene foam.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has called for a ban on polystyrene foam and announced the start of a food waste collection pilot program.
During his State of the City speech last week, the mayor called food waste the city's "final recycling frontier" and said the city will launch curbside food waste collections this spring for single-family homes in Stanton Island.
"If it succeeds, we'll develop a plan to take it citywide," he said.
In total, the city buries 1.1 million tons of food waste in landfills every year, he said, at the cost of $80 per ton. Diverting and composting that waste could save the city a massive amount of money, he said.
In addition to the pilot program, the city will take food waste collections in schools throughout the city.
"There is no better way to teach the next generation about the importance of recycling than to make it a part of their school day routine," Bloomberg said.
Calling polystyrene "virtually impossible to recycle," Bloomberg called for a ban on foam take-out containers, saying they were a drag on the environment and the city could live without them.
"Don't worry: The doggie bag and the coffee cup will survive just fine," he said.
Any ban on polystyrene would ultimately have to be passed by the City Council.
The American Chemistry Council quickly shot back at the proposal, with Steve Russell, vice president of plastics for the group saying the technology exists to recycle polystyrene.
"California is making this work," he said in a statement. "Twenty-two percent of households there can recycle polystyrene foam food service cups, plates, bowls, clamshells and other containers at curbside."
Polystyrene foam containers make up less than 1% of the nation's solid waste, he said.
"They use significantly less energy and water to manufacture than paper alternatives and create significantly less waste by weight and comparable waste by volume," Russell said in the statement.
Bloomberg said he wants to see the city's recycling rate climb to 30% by 2017, and part of that initiative is putting 1,000 new recycling containers throughout the city in public places. In addition, a massive new Sims Recycling facility set to open in 2013 will accept all types of plastics, he said.
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