Smart trash collection8/11/2023 “We pick up their garbage at the curbside, we ought to be picking up they're separated food waste in the same place.”Įxperts and city officials agree that de Blasio’s zero waste pledge is not possible without a mandatory citywide organic recycling program - a service currently available in San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. “New Yorkers have a lot on their minds,” Goldstein said. In 2015 the mayor pledged to reach virtually “zero waste” sent to landfills by 2030. According to figures provided by the Department of Sanitation, fewer than 100,000 households are currently receiving regular compost pick-ups. Like many sustainability experts – including the mayor’s former sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia – Goldstein has criticized de Blasio for falling short of his campaign pledge to implement curbside composting pick-up citywide by 2018. “These bins aren’t designed for broad public participation, they’re designed for composting aficionados,” he said in an interview. If successful, the program could expand to other neighborhoods by next year, forming a sort of “Citi Bike of compost,” according to sanitation department spokesperson Joshua Goodman.Īccording to Goldstein, however, if the goal is to increase participation in composting, the bins aren’t going to cut it. ![]() Their purpose is to provide a round-the-clock location for New Yorkers to drop off their organic food waste, rather than waiting on the weekly green market. Sensors inside the bins alert the Sanitation Department when they’re full, and Bluetooth technology allows users to open them with an app or, in the Astoria version of the pilot, a key fob obtained by the city – a safeguard against naive passersby tossing their trash onto the heaps of decomposing rinds and peels. “You’ll never get the widespread participation in this program by focusing on bins that city residents have to drag scraps of food to on a regular basis,” said Eric Goldstein, the New York City environment director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Despite being a potent emitter of greenhouse gas, Mayor Bill de Blasio was cutting funding for the collection of food and yard scraps even before the pandemic - all but guaranteeing the city will fall well short of its goal to cut the waste sent to landfills by 90 percent by 2030. The droid-like containers, dubbed “Smart Bins,” are part of a first-of-its-kind composting program launched by the Department of Sanitation and the Downtown Alliance, a Lower Manhattan business group.īut for composting enthusiasts, the bins are little more than a bleak reminder of the de Blasio administration’s failings in the arena of organic recycling. ![]() “I don’t know what you dispose there,” Bell said. “I haven’t seen anyone use it,” said Cesar Bell, a florist whose shop overlooks one of the containers in the Financial District - and whose floral detritus would make an ideal deposit for the robot bins. On a recent morning, most New Yorkers greeted them with a mix of indifference and confusion. Unlike their neighboring receptacles, the new bins were sealed shut, snapping open only in response to a key fob or phone app. They arrived without warning on the street corners of Astoria and Lower Manhattan earlier this month: bright orange bins, next to the trash and recycling cans, soliciting food and yard scraps from passing pedestrians.
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