Recycling (photo: NYC Council)

New York has a waste problem, and it demands a bold, collaborative solution.  

For years, New York has talked about Extended Producer Responsibility legislation to address this crisis. As an organization that is committed to leveraging innovation to protect our environment, the American Chemistry Council supports working toward and enacting a strong, effective EPR bill that helps increase our ability to recapture and recycle what we do produce. 

Cut the Trash: Time for New York to Pass the Waste Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act

Garbage (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

In a recentTikTok video, a woman opens a giant cardboard box and pulls out layers and layers of bubble wrap, only to reveal four more tiny cardboard boxes, each of which contain a single napkin ring. The caption reads, “Am I on PUNK’D?

Community composting (photo: William Alatriste/City Council)

When Mayor Eric Adams was running for City Hall, he pledged to expand the city’s incipient residential curbside composting program. But despite a push for more by some City Council members, the recently approved $101 billion budget for next fiscal year, beginning July 1, only marginally increases funding for other composting programs while halting the promised expansion of residential curbside composting. 

The city’s voluntary curbside composting program has moved forward in fits and starts. Organics account for about a third of

(photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

Trash and sanitation have become a top issue for the City Council in this year’s budget season, but Mayor Eric Adams’s $99.7 billion executive budget proposal for the 2023 fiscal year that begins July 1 failed to fund many Council demands. At a hearing on Tuesday, Council members questioned administration officials on their sanitation priorities — from corner basket pickups to composting — and their approach to a problem that has

Council Member Chi Ossé on a sanitation tour of his district (photo: John McCarten/NYC Council Media Unit)

Trash has become among the most prominent issues in this year’s New York City budget negotiations, as well as the focus of larger policy debates about how the city handles its garbage and recycling.

The infamous mountains of black bags that clutter sidewalks, the overflowing waste baskets at street corners, and the litter on city streets have all been the subject of significant attention from Mayor Eric Adams, Comptroller Brad Lander, and many members of the New York City Council,

Paper recycling (photo: Michael Anton/NY City Department of Sanitation))

To the Editor:  

The March 28, 2022 column, “For the Earth, It’s Essential New York Leaders Pass Extended Producer Responsibility,” by New York League of Conservation Voters President Julie Tighe misses the mark by urging lawmakers in Albany to pass an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policy. State legislators should pursue a more deliberative approach to consider New

Compost collection (photo: New York City Department of Sanitation)

Last week was Food Waste Action Week in the United Kingdom and across Canada.

The focus? Reducing and preventing food waste, with a variety of programs supporting smarter purchasing and cooking, with the goal of attacking what nearly every household generates too much of.

By the (Canadian) numbers: 63% of the food households throw away is considered avoidable, meaning it could have been

City Council Member Sandy Nurse (photo: @SandyforCouncil)

February 4, 2022 - Max Politics Podcast: The Future of Garbage and Trash, with City Council Member Sandy Nurse

City Council Member Sandy Nurse, the new chair of the Council's Sanitation Committee, joined the show to discuss her background in recycling and green jobs, her approach to chairing the committee, the future of organics recycling, commercial waste zones, curbside trash containerization, and more.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what

Garbage (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

Our trashy story begins with a wartime question: after mass-producing aluminum, steel, and plastics for the military to fight Nazis, what happens when the war is over? What if, instead of reverting to peacetime manufacturing, America could charge ahead, simultaneously creating and fulfilling a civilian “need?”

The rest is advertising history. Over the course of a few

Kathryn Garcia (photo via the Department of Sanitation)

This could be the election that flips an old maxim on its head: we may soon find out that there are many different Democratic ways to pick up the trash.

While garbage probably won’t be among the top issues most voters care about when electing the next mayor of New York City, what better opportunity for a real conversation about how the city handles its trash and recycling than having the recently-departed sanitation commissioner among the candidates vying for the city’s top job.

Kathryn

Canners redeeming their work (photo: Carlos Rivea for Sure We Can)

In New York City, there are an estimated 8,000 informal canners, or people who collect, sort, and redeem deposit-based containers for a living. Earning a nickel per can or bottle, canners straddle a liminal space in society: though often visible pushing carts with bulging bags through the city, they work in the shadows because of fear of harassment, shame,

Questions about recycling abound (photo: Michael Anton/Sanitation)

The May 13 op-ed by Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and City Council Member Antonio Reynoso, New York City Must Keep and Expand Organics Collection, It’s an Essential Service, suffers from two major fallacies.

The authors begin their piece:

 “While is it is no secret that the city’s curbside organics collection program doesn’t pay

City Council Member Antonio Reynoso, the author (photo: Emil Cohen/City Council)

These months will go down as one of the most trying periods in our city’s history. We are consumed by the grief of lost loved ones, colleagues, and neighbors, while facing a level of economic uncertainty not seen in generations. In this moment of crisis, many of us feel compelled to put on blinders and focus solely on addressing the present situation, and there is no doubt that efforts to combat COVID-19 will require vast resources and attention from our best

Mayor de Blasio at a garbage facility (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

Even as the global COVID-19 shutdown produces fortuitous environmental benefits such as cleaner air due to a huge decline in travel, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is cynically using the pandemic to justify backtracking on pollution standards

(photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

When the New York Times announced that Rats Are Taking Over New York City, the widely-shared article and subsequent discussion overlooked one obvious remedy: reboot New York City’s stalled, neglected Organics Collection Program, and use it to take away a primary food source for rats near residential buildings.

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