New York City to end garbage exports

New York City to end garbage exports

The mayor of the largest city in the United States say they will no longer participate in a society that puts things in the ground.

“Outrageous” is how New York City mayor Bill de Blasio described the current garbage situation in his city. He said in a press conference today – Earth Day – that by 2030 the city would no longer participate in a society that puts waste on a train or barge and delivering it elsewhere and then “putting it in the ground.”

The mayor said that New York would no longer send any garbage to landfills outside New York state and would reduce overall output by 90 percent. All of of it, instead, will be composted, recycled or eliminated from the waste stream.

The residential recycling program of the largest city in the United States currently captures only about 15 percent the city’s solid waste. With each New York resident discarding almost 15 pounds of garbage each week, de Blasio said the challenge needed to be tackled head on.

Trash has been exported for decades by boat or rail to facilities across the Eastern seaboard, including Virginia, South Carolina, Pennsylvania or New Jersey. Such exports cost over $350 million each year, a cost that would be saved under the new plan.

Composting material is now picked up from only 100,000 households but the plan is to retrieve it from every home before 2018. Critical to the effort will be the city’s effort to reduce the number of things sold that cannot be composted or recycled. One example is its recent ban on non-recyclable packing materials and foam-constructed food containers. Next on de Blasio’s list is to curtail the use of plastic shopping bags.

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