Waste Valorization and the Circular Economy
Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management
Meeting overview
The Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management held an oversight hearing on waste valorization and the circular economy, alongside consideration of two bills and two resolutions. The substantive testimony came primarily from DSNY Commissioner Gregory Anderson and his team, with public witnesses representing environmental advocacy groups, canners, and homeowners. The hearing covered a wide range of topics including textile recycling, composting infrastructure, co-digestion of organics at wastewater facilities, nightlife district street cleaning, illegal dumping, and the bottle bill.
Commissioner Anderson's testimony was notable for its candor on several fronts. He acknowledged that the food donation portal DSNY operates has been essentially useless, moving only around five tons of food per year against the 40,000 tons moved annually by partner organizations like City Harvest, and suggested the City's resources would be better directed toward supporting those nonprofits' transportation and real estate constraints. On textiles, he was measured about the prospects for curbside collection, citing two failed pilots, while flagging the sector as a priority for the forthcoming Solid Waste Management Plan. On emerging waste streams, he called out lithium batteries as a growing hazard causing truck fires and made a pointed call for extended producer responsibility legislation in Albany, estimating it could deliver over $100 million annually to New York City's recycling program alone. On alternative waste-processing technologies such as pyrolysis, he pushed back against what he called the "emotional" framing that has historically blocked scientific assessment of promising options.
The co-digestion discussion was the most technically detailed portion of the hearing, with DEP's Jane Godwani explaining the Newtown Creek model, where Waste Management pre-processes food waste into pumpable bio-slurry at no cost to the City, which is then co-digested with sewage sludge and converted to renewable natural gas distributed through National Grid's grid under the federal Renewable Fuel Standard. The Hunts Point wastewater facility is undergoing a parallel buildout, with new anaerobic digesters expected online in 2026 and potential capacity of up to 400 tons of food waste per day, subject to a nitrogen management assessment. The committee pressed hard on environmental justice implications for the South Bronx, including truck traffic, odor, and cumulative air quality impacts, with CM Louis noting the district's already high asthma rates. DEP flagged interest in barge transport as a lower-impact alternative.
Public testimony was dominated by two threads. The first was a passionate and well-evidenced case for expanding the bottle bill, presented by Ryan Castelli of Can Can and Cecilia Ellis of NYPIRG, alongside direct testimony from canners Petra and Jose Marin. Canners currently earn roughly five dollars an hour; the deposit has not increased in forty years; and a ten-cent deposit, expanded container coverage, and increased handling fees are estimated to save New York City between $35 million and $80 million annually while dramatically improving return rates and supporting marginalized workers. The resolution before the committee, Res 0362-2026, calls on Albany to act, and the testimony made clear that the committee should be loudly reinforcing that call. The second public thread concerned containerization, with a homeowner testifying about the practical and financial absurdity of being ticketed for setting out bags after her bins were stolen, and an advocate calling for containerization pilots that include recycling and composting infrastructure alongside trash, arguing that trash-only containerization risks worsening diversion rates.
The NRDC flagged the most consequential broader issue: the Draft Solid Waste Management Plan currently circulating is, in their assessment, insufficiently ambitious and too vague to serve as a meaningful planning document, and the committee should prioritize engaging with and strengthening it before finalization. Given that the SWMP is supposed to guide resource recovery for the next decade, this is not a minor concern.
Numbers
- DSNY collects 24 million pounds of trash, recycling, and compostable material every day.
- Textiles represent approximately 5% of New York City's residential and institutional waste stream.
- In fiscal year 2025, DSNY collected 107,187 tons of textile waste but diverted only 4.3% of it.
- Approximately 2,500 residential buildings are currently enrolled in DSNY's in-building textile collection program.
- The food donation portal run by DSNY has moved approximately five tons of food per year in recent years, down from a stronger start, due to one-time-only funding.
- Partner food rescue organizations such as City Harvest move approximately 40,000 tons of food per year across New York City.
- DSNY used approximately 505,000 tons of road salt during the most recent heavy winter season.
- Alternative de-icing agents such as calcium magnesium acetate cost upward of ten to twenty times more per ton than conventional rock salt.
- New York City stands to receive more than $100 million annually under extended producer responsibility legislation for packaging, based on bills previously introduced in the State Legislature.
- DSNY has collected 80,000 tons of organics year-to-date in the current calendar year.
- The Newtown Creek co-digestion facility can process approximately 250 tons per day of organic material, equivalent to 500,000 pounds per day.
- Newtown Creek produces enough renewable natural gas to heat approximately 6,500 homes.
- The Hunts Point facility could potentially process up to 400 tons of food waste per day, subject to nitrogen management constraints.
- Approximately two-thirds of the organic material processed at Newtown Creek comes from DSNY and one-third from the commercial sector.
- The Newtown Creek co-digestion program is operated at no direct cost to the City under agreements with Waste Management and National Grid.
- Residual material not converted to biogas from food waste constitutes approximately 25% of incoming mass and incurs disposal costs as biosolids.
- Approximately 50 to 60% of renewable natural gas produced at Newtown Creek is used on site, with the remainder distributed to the grid.
- Infrastructure upgrades at Hunts Point were approximately 75% complete as of 2025, with construction expected to conclude by end of 2026.
- DEP operates 75 anaerobic digesters across 14 in-city wastewater treatment plants in all five boroughs.
- At current Newtown Creek processing volumes, barge delivery involves approximately eight to ten trucks per day; full 400-ton-per-day operation at Hunts Point could involve approximately 15 trucks per day.
- The bottle deposit has not increased in 40 years and currently stands at five cents.
- Canners in New York City earn on average approximately five dollars per hour.
- A ten-cent bottle deposit is projected to increase container return rates to 90%.
- Expanding the bottle bill could save New York City between $34.9 million and $80 million annually in solid waste disposal and litter cleanup costs.
- The bottle bill has produced a 70% reduction in street litter since its implementation.
- Four community districts handle 75% of the City's private waste transfer.
Action Points
- DSNY to provide the committee with a breakdown of textiles collected by participant category, specifically apartment buildings with ten-plus units, office buildings, commercial industries, schools, and nonprofit institutions.
- DSNY to provide a timeline for the launch of the small residential buildings textile recycling pilot program, anticipated within the next year.
- DSNY to share with CM Ung's office existing informational materials on proper bulk and contractor waste disposal procedures for residents and small contractors.
- DSNY to work with CM Louis's office on an education and outreach campaign around bulk collection procedures.
- DSNY to follow up with CM Louis's office regarding reinstatement or replacement of the composting drop-off sites previously operating in Flatbush Junction and East Flatbush.
- DSNY to assess existing legal authority to hold last-mile delivery companies accountable for abandoned courier bag waste and to identify any legislative gaps, then work with the Council to address them.
- DSNY and DEP to provide the committee with the average daily collection figure for source-separated residential organic waste, to be calculated from the 80,000-ton year-to-date figure.
- DEP to provide the committee with cost breakdown figures for operating anaerobic digesters, teased out from overall facility operating costs where possible.
- DEP to conduct and complete an environmental assessment and solicitation process for the Hunts Point co-digestion program, including appointment of an owner's adviser engaged via the spring request for proposals.
- DEP to complete the nitrogen management assessment for the Hunts Point facility to establish the final cap on food waste intake below the 400-ton-per-day theoretical maximum.
- DEP to investigate barge and marine transfer as the preferred logistics option for delivering pre-processed food waste to the Hunts Point facility, minimizing truck traffic to the South Bronx site.
- DEP to provide the committee with projected renewable natural gas output figures for the Hunts Point facility once the nitrogen assessment and capacity planning are complete.
- DSNY and the committee to engage with Albany on extended producer responsibility legislation for packaging, which DSNY estimates would deliver over $100 million annually to New York City.
- Committee to prioritize review and strengthening of the Draft Solid Waste Management Plan before finalization, per NRDC's recommendation that the current draft is insufficiently specific and ambitious.
- DSNY to explore shared containerization pilots for streets with above-storefront residential walk-up units, including bins for trash, recycling, and composting together, not trash only.
- DSNY and committee to work with OATH to establish theft of bin as a recognized defense to containerization violations, and to create a reporting mechanism allowing homeowners to notify DSNY of theft to pause ticketing during bin replacement.
- DSNY to investigate a system for residents to book large-volume pickup in advance online, protecting them from violations during temporary volume spikes such as tenant move-outs or holiday events.
- DSNY to explore creative participation incentives for the textile recycling program in areas without Helpsy drop-off sites, including possible sanitation credits, in response to CM Maloney's request.
- Committee to formally and loudly support Res 0362-2026 calling on Albany to expand the bottle bill, increase the deposit to ten cents, expand container coverage, and increase handling fees for redemption centers.
▸ Full Transcript
Did he give you the go-ahead on the question?
Good morning. Welcome to the Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management. At this time we ask that you please silence all electronics. If you wish to fill out the speakers card, please see one of the sergeants at arms in the back. At no point please do not approach the dais. Chair, you may begin.
Thank you so much. I want to thank everyone for arriving here on time for the prompt 10 AM sanitation hearing. Apologies for my delay, and I want to thank everyone for your attendance. Having said that, good morning and finally welcome to the Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management. I know, I know — you have been waiting all week, all year. I am CM Justin Sanchez, Chair of this Committee. I would like to thank the members of the Committee that are here with us today: CM Shanel Thomas-Henry, CM Zhuang, CM Hanif, CM Louis. I do not think we have anyone on Zoom but if they arrive I will announce them.
I would like to thank the members of the public that are here to testify. I would also like to thank the members of the public who are here and ready to see that the purpose of this hearing is to learn more about the current work of the New York City Department of Sanitation and the Business Integrity Commission to seek value from our discarded materials and to help further the circular economy in New York City.
In addition to oversight, we will be hearing two Bills and two Resolutions today. Int 0256-2026, by CM Crystal Hudson, would require the Department of Sanitation Commissioner to study and report on the feasibility and environmental effects of a mandate for households to separate and collect textile waste. This study would consider, among other things, the cost, potential benefits and potential negative effects of such a mandate. Int 0970-2026, by CM Jennifer Gutiérrez, would require the establishment of nightlife districts based on several criteria. DSNY would be required to increase street sweeping and litter basket services by one day on the weekends in any such nightlife district at the request of the relevant community board. This Bill would also permit DSNY to resume its original street sweeping and litter basket schedule if for 30 days there has been a reduction in street cleanliness related 311 service requests in such nightlife districts.
Res 0122-2026, sponsored by CM Sandy Nurse, calls on DSNY and the Department of Parks and Recreation to continue to engage and collaborate with local communities to encourage and allow community composting to be carried out on parkland. Finally, Res 0362-2026, also sponsored by CM Nurse, calls upon the New York State Legislature to pass and the Governor to sign legislation to amend the Environmental Conservation Law in relation to returnable bottles.
I look forward to the dialog today and I would like to thank everyone on my team for their work on this legislation and oversight. I would also like to recognize CM Wilson who was here earlier as well.
Good morning, Chair Sanchez and members of the Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management. I am Gregory Anderson, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Sanitation. I am joined today by Jennifer McDonald, Deputy Commissioner of Solid Waste Management; Kate Kitchener, Executive Director of Resource Recovery at DSNY; and Jane Godwani, Director of the Office of Energy and Resource Recovery at DEP. Thank you for inviting us to testify today.
We will start with a little history. New Yorkers have been recycling in some form for more than 200 years. In the nineteenth century, rendering plants, scrap dealers and an informal network of rag and bone pickers ensured that the most usable discards were given new life. In the early twentieth century, during the World Wars and the Great Depression, New Yorkers used and reused out of a sense of civic duty, necessity or both. But in the twentieth century, industrial growth and economic transformation in the United States built a powerful economy based on the insatiable appetite of a growing population of Americans as consumers of products, of energy, of land and of water.
The fundamental premise of this twentieth century economy was to take, make and waste — both natural and labor resources from around the globe to fuel economic growth. At the same time we found every possible way to dispose of the growing volumes of trash we generated: dump it in the ocean, burn it, bury it in giant mountains of trash. Over time there was a growing realization that we are asking more of our planet and of its people than we can endure, and that this economic model — take, make, waste — was unsustainable. Here in New York City we struggled with the reality that our means of disposal in polluting incinerators and barely regulated landfills across the City, and the behemoth Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, would not last.
For decades the Department of Sanitation has endeavored to recover and reclaim as much of the value remaining in the products New Yorkers use, whether by reuse, composting, conversion to energy or through other means. Our modern recycling programs were born out of the environmental movement of the 1970s and 80s, beginning with grassroots efforts to collect recyclable products like cans and newspapers at the neighborhood level. New York City instituted its first recycling program in 1985, collecting old newspapers in Greenwich Village before expanding to other neighborhoods and other material types. Local Law 19 of 1989 codified the City's mandatory curbside recycling program and is the foundation of the program we have today. More recently we have created the largest mandatory curbside composting program in the nation to collect compostable material — food scraps, yard waste, food-soiled paper — so we can turn it into finished compost or into renewable energy, far better than shipping it to landfills hundreds of miles away.
As we continue our work to create a more circular economy, we are in the process of finalizing our 2026 Solid Waste Management Plan, or SWMP for short, a 10-year plan designed to guide the future of resource recovery in our City. We remain on track to complete the plan this year and we look forward to continued engagement with the City Council regarding its completion and implementation. The New York City Department of Sanitation collects and processes 24 million pounds of trash, recycling and compostable material every day. For many decades one of our goals has been to put as much of this material to beneficial reuse as possible. Beneficial use, though, changes with technological development and with the shifting markets.
There are also formal and informal exchanges of used and unwanted goods in thrift stores, on WhatsApp chats and at stoops that ensure that products with value stay in circulation well beyond just one initial use. In our experience at DSNY, recovering value from waste has worked best when the public sector and private sector come together to make investments in sustainable processes and facilities to...
...support waste diversion. The Staten Island compost facility was built by the City of New York and much of its operation is handled by a private contractor. We process millions of pounds of food waste and yard waste there every year, keeping that material out of landfills and producing valuable compost which we both sell and give away to New Yorkers. Likewise, the Sunset Park Materials Recovery Facility is built on City land with capital funds, but the facility itself was built and is operated by a private sector partner.
Nowhere is the value of these public-private investments in the circular economy clearer than at the Pratt Industries paper mill on Staten Island. Thanks to tens of millions in public and private investment, when you throw away a newspaper or a cardboard box in your green recycling bin in Manhattan today, it will be barged to Staten Island to become a pizza box sold potentially in Brooklyn next week. That is recycling at work.
A similar model may be the path forward for two of our biggest challenges in the development of our waste management infrastructure: used textiles and lithium batteries. For textiles, which represent about 5% of New York City's waste stream, there are a number of not-for-profit and for-profit entities developing their own operational capacity for sorting and processing, and DSNY is ready to assist as this industry develops. Our current textile recycling partnership provides easy, convenient drop-off for many New Yorkers, but we are interested in working with private sector partners to develop mass-market solutions more aligned with our composting and traditional recycling programs.
Lithium batteries, on the other hand, have suddenly appeared in an incredible variety of products, and that means they are in the trash somewhere in the City every single day. They explode in our trucks and put sanitation workers and other workers at risk. Imagine a world where lithium battery recycling becomes the economically preferable alternative to disposal and producers are therefore incentivized to ensure proper handling of these items. Shifting this responsibility would be safer and reduce the extractive impacts of lithium mining.
As we look to the future, we are encouraged by efforts to create new partnerships to reduce waste, increase waste diversion and move to a more circular economy. We have long supported the creation of extended producer responsibility laws to shift the financial and physical responsibility for recycling and disposing of products from local governments like us and our taxpayers to the companies that manufacture, sell and distribute these products to consumers. Chief among these is packaging waste, created explicitly for one-time use and often difficult to separate, sort and remanufacture, leaving New York taxpayers holding the bill to collect and process these materials. A program for packaging would incentivize manufacturers to reduce waste and increase recyclability and the use of recycled content, lowering recycling and disposal costs for cities, saving taxpayers money and reducing the waste sent to landfills.
Based on Bills previously introduced in the State Legislature, New York City alone stands to receive more than $100 million annually to support a recycling program, an investment in new infrastructure and consumer education. I thank the Council for its prior support on this important issue and I call on our partners in Albany to work with the municipalities and the State to get this Bill across the finish line once and for all.
Turning to the legislation on today's agenda: Int 0256-2026, sponsored by CM Hudson, would require DSNY to study the feasibility and potential environmental effects of a mandate for the source separation of textiles by households and the collection of these items. DSNY supports the intent of this Bill to increase the amount of textiles diverted from landfills, which make up at least 5% of the City's residential and institutional waste stream. DSNY currently offers several programs to divert textiles from landfills: collection for residential buildings with 10 or more units as well as commercial buildings, schools and nonprofits; community recycling events in all 59 community districts annually; and publicly accessible textile collection bins in every borough. We look forward to discussing this Bill further with the Council and discussing strategies to increase diversion of this material.
On Int 0970-2026, sponsored by CM Gutiérrez, which would require DSNY to designate nightlife districts and provide supplemental street cleaning and litter basket services in such districts, DSNY supports the intent of this Bill and we look forward to further conversations around the specific neighborhoods that would be covered by this Bill and the resources that would be needed to provide the supplemental service.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify today and we look forward to answering your questions.
Commissioner, okay. For those that have not been to my Committee before, the way that I like to do it is I start with some questions and then I pass it off to my colleagues and we bounce it around so it does not get dull, hopefully. But before we get started I really want to give a shout out to someone that is new and is sitting next to me. As you can see, my former Committee counsel Morgan Barrett has moved on, and so I want everyone to give a huge welcome and shout out to Samia Shell, who is the new Committee counsel for this Committee. We are so excited to have her, so please give a round of applause. There is a co-counsel but when she comes in she can say so that she can get her proper time in the spotlight.
Oh, and CM Santosuosso is here in person. Okay. So, is the way that the Department categorizes its waste streams — for example metal, glass, plastic, textiles and organics — still effective? Is the agency exploring new ways to categorize waste to facilitate sorting and other downstream disposal and...
...recycling processes? We think that the categorization that we use, which is generally based on product type, is very effective, because at the end of the day we are producing materials for materials markets to remanufacture those products into new products. So when we do our waste characterization study next year, for example, we will try to identify — looking at the plastics — what kinds of plastics are in the waste stream, and then think about whether there are markets for those plastics, whether New Yorkers are successfully separating those products in their homes, whether we are successfully sorting them at our Materials Recovery Facility and ultimately whether those are getting turned into new products down the road. So we think it is...
...successful, yes. Is there also any conversation, given how rapidly technology is moving and new products are coming around — lithium-ion batteries were not a thing 25 years ago — as we are experiencing all of these new technologies and these new kinds of waste, are we preparing and understanding what those new things happening to our waste streams look like and how they are affecting our waste?
Absolutely. For packaging in particular, an extended producer responsibility program would have a massive impact because it would require companies, as they are looking at new packaging products, to think about the end use of those products and the recyclability of those products and the recycled content that is contained within them. I think right now packaging companies are looking at a variety of other performance-related aspects of their packaging — does it keep food fresh, for example. That is a good goal to have, but if it keeps food fresh and cannot be recycled, we need to be able to balance those two components...
...to make sure that we are designing packaging that works best for the entire lifecycle of the value chain. So that is what an extended producer responsibility program would do for packaging in particular. There are always new products coming onto the market and unfortunately, because we are at the end of the line, we end up being very reactive around developing programs for those new products. I think rechargeable batteries are a great example there. We are always working with our partners across the country and even around the world to try to identify those new things as they are coming up. It is almost like there is a Bill in Albany about that...
Yes, Albany, I am looking at you. One challenge facing local composting efforts includes limited space for composting facilities. So how does the Department plan to help address this problem?
Composting is a very space-intensive use — that is just the nature of the business. We have for a long time worked with community composters and community gardens to give them the technical resources, the know-how and the tools to be able to compost where they are, in their community garden, in a neighborhood park, things like that. Transitioning that to composting at scale is very challenging. I think one of the best opportunities we have, as we have discussed before, is space on Rikers Island. As the jails on Rikers Island close, there will be a huge amount of space, and a piece of that could be used for industrial-scale composting — really to do so in a way that is at the forefront of innovation and technology, where potentially we could use a smaller footprint by taking advantage of new technologies that are on the market.
I want to make sure that people know we have been joined by CM Vernikov. One of the Department's goals for the Draft SWMP includes expanding food donation and other edible food recovery efforts. How does the Department plan to do that? Will it work to increase the amount of food donated by businesses? Have you already started that work and what does that work entail specifically? Does the Department plan to expand the donate portal that already exists? How much food waste does the Department currently estimate it collects from food service establishments?
Sure. So I will respond to those questions in order. I think first and foremost we do a lot of work with the Mayor's Office of Food Policy and they really lead the work around food rescue, food donation and feeding hungry New Yorkers. They convene all of the food recovery partners, everything from large organizations like City Harvest and Food Bank for New York City down to neighborhood pantries or folks doing work in their community. One of the steps that I think will be really helpful in this space is the additional language that the Council added to the commercial organics law, which takes effect later this year, which requires commercial carters to provide information about food donation to each of the businesses that participates in compost collection, which will be mandatory for all businesses in New York City as of next year. I think that will really close the loop there.
As far as the donating food portal, I think to be frank it is not a very productive use of our resources. This is a space where there are lots of organizations already operating really effectively, and to ask government to come in and make these kinds of connections on a business-to-business level I think really just is not super productive. We have not moved a lot of material through that portal since it was created, probably seven or eight years ago. So I think probably where we are better suited to apply our resources is in capacity building for the nonprofits that are already operating in this space. I think one of the things that we hear from them is that transportation and real estate are two of the biggest constraints that they have. If we can as a City provide more resources to help solve some of those problems, I think they could probably achieve a lot more than we could through the food donation portal. And then as far as numbers around food waste donated or rescued, I will turn it over to Kate for this.
Yeah, thank you. So I think there are two important numbers to look at here. There is the food portal that we have and then there are also the donated meat partners with food rescue networks across the City, as Commissioner Guzman is mentioning. So for the food donations through the portal, it has kind of decreased — it started out strong but we really only got one-time funding for that program, and so in recent years it has been around five tons a year. The partners, which include places like City Harvest, those numbers are much bigger. That is around 40,000 tons a year, so you can really see that the partners are doing a great job. As the Commissioner mentioned, we are working very closely with the Mayor's Office of Food Policy to support those groups and what they are doing. We actually had a summit last fall with all the food rescue networks and then we have had several meetings to try to address some of the challenges around technology, transportation and logistics as the Commissioner mentioned. I think that is really taking the lead and we are happy to support.
And just generally, do you know how much actual food from restaurant establishments... so organics are collected by private haulers, not by Sanitation. I am sorry — the question is not about that, but rather estimating how much food actually goes to waste.
We do not have those numbers yet, but maybe as we see the commercial waste zones program roll out we are hoping to get better data around that.
And in fiscal year 25 the department collected 107,187 tons of textile waste but only diverted 4.3%. Can you explain the historical difficulties of textile recycling and diversion in the City? Do you believe that the department-hosted textile drop-off sites — there is one in my building, thank you — and the free in-building collection program are being successfully utilized by New Yorkers? And how might the department encourage more buildings to participate in the textile recycling program?
Yes. So today we have around 2,500 buildings enrolled in our in-building textile collection program. I think one of the important points of comparison here is between our in-building textile collection program and our in-building electronics collection program. Electronics disposal has been prohibited by State law for over a decade, so participation in that program is mandatory. For the textile program, buildings can join if they want to. We think it is a really great program because we give you the bin, you set it up in your building, and whenever it is full you call us and our partner comes to pick it up. It is a great additional amenity that buildings can offer their residents, but it is again totally voluntary. So that is a space where there is certainly more opportunity for additional outreach and additional engagement to grow that program, which has been relatively stagnant for the last few years.
For collection more generally, I think part of the challenge — and I sort of pointed at this in my testimony — is that there is a lot of informal reuse of material happening that we cannot measure. So the numbers that we look at in our waste characterization study really are only looking at the end of the line: that is material that actually ends up in the trash and how much of what would end up in the trash gets reused or recycled through programs that we run.
But you know, I have a two-year-old. I can tell you that the WhatsApp groups go crazy for kids' clothes and things like that, and whenever my daughter grows out of a size we can always find someone to take that. But no one is measuring the probably hundreds of pounds of onesies and other things that I have donated over the years.
I am curious — businesses produce roughly 10% of the textile waste stream, so how have you seen businesses comply...
...with some of these rules? Yeah, so I think that is a space that we have not done a lot of measurement in. There is an industry around the reuse of textiles, particularly from the fashion industry, so I think that exists but we do not have great data on how much material is actually being recovered and how much material is ending up in the waste stream. I think this is a space where, when we are able to do a first commercial waste characterization study at some point in the future after commercial waste zones is fully rolled out, we will have a much better understanding of how much textiles there are in the waste stream, where they are coming from, what the condition is at the time of disposal, and really be able to dive into that. And this is an area that in the Solid Waste Management Plan, which we hope to finalize in the coming months, we have a number of initiatives around this specific topic.
And a complete left-field question before I turn it over to some of my colleagues: the department uses a significant amount of rock salt and brine to de-ice the streets. Has the department explored other alternatives to rock salt and brine? And has the department researched other technologies in addition to anaerobic digestion or waste-to-energy that could improve the extraction of valuable materials from the City's waste streams?
Absolutely. So we will start with the salt question. The short answer is yes, we have explored alternatives to rock salt. Last year, which was the heaviest winter we have had in quite some time, we used about 505,000 tons of salt, which is a significant amount. There is a conversation in the roadway maintenance and public works industry around the use of rock salt for fighting snow, and it is a much more pressing conversation in places near the Great Lakes, near the Delaware River and other freshwater receiving waters — particularly freshwater receiving waters that are sensitive environments or that are drinking water sources.
Here in New York City we have just a handful of freshwater streams and creeks, and the majority of our sewer system discharges into saltwater, so there is not that same urgency around the impact of salt pollution on freshwater receiving waters. But we do understand that there are implications for our infrastructure, particularly our transportation and energy infrastructure, and the corrosive impacts that road salt can have. When we looked at alternatives, I think the challenge comes down to two things: one is effectiveness and the other is cost. We have looked at some alternatives like alternative brines and the beet sugar-based products that have been tested in the Midwest — they are simply not effective. And for things like calcium magnesium acetate, they can be effective, but being able to procure at the volume that we need is a problem. One, there is not manufacturing capacity for those kinds of products at the volume that we would need. Two, they are tremendously expensive — upwards of 10 to 20 times more expensive per ton than road salt — and I think that would be potentially prohibitive. And sorry, you had...
...the other half of your question. Anaerobic digestion — can you just restate the second part? Has the department researched other technologies in addition to anaerobic digestion or waste-to-energy that could improve the extraction of valuable materials from the City's waste streams?
Yes, so we certainly have, and I think there is a whole dialogue in the industry right now around technologies to extract value from the waste stream. Some of these technologies have unfortunately been treated like the boogeyman. There are things like pyrolysis, which maybe 10 years ago was a relatively unproven technology at scale but I think has really proven out. In certain contexts it is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but for certain products that are difficult or nearly impossible to recycle through other means it can be an effective solution to divert material from landfill. I think we need to do a much more rigorous analysis of those kinds of technologies in a scientific way, instead of the much more emotional way that we have approached those technologies in the past. Thank you. I will now pass the mic over to CM Shanel Thomas-Henry.
Good morning. So I have two questions — one on topic, one off. For the textile program, how are businesses being made aware that the program exists?
I will pass it over to Kate, who manages that program.
Yeah. So as we mentioned, the program is primarily for residential buildings but we do allow commercial buildings to have a bin in their building. We have staff that do outreach to certain business types that might be interested in having textiles — laundromats that might have a lost and found, things like that. So that is how we get the word out around that.
So it is predominantly for homeowners, not necessarily textile manufacturers or the like.
Exactly. All right, so thanks...
...for the clarity. I have a question on dumping. Originally I thought there were sites throughout the City where individuals can dump, but it seems like there are just special waste drop sites. Is that correct? There are currently none in my district. It seems as if individuals are cleaning out homes and then just dumping anything from mattresses to microwaves and the like in various areas. Is there any plan that Sanitation has, in addition to the cameras, to mitigate this?
Yeah. So in the very distant past — probably before many of us were alive — the department did operate what were called self-help sites, where homeowners could bring a load of whatever trash they had and dispose of it. That was back when we operated the Fresh Kills landfill and we had transfer stations to landfills all across New York City. We have not operated the self-help sites in 20-something years, and I do not know that given the current regulatory environment and the permitting framework that we operate in today we would be able to open those up for the kinds of large-scale loads of material that are typically the cause of illegal dumping.
I think the two things I would say here are: one, we go to every residential property in New York City two or three times a week, so there is no need to illegally dump material because we will come to you and we will pick it up. On the other hand, if you are a contractor doing renovations and you are hiring someone to come in and do your kitchen or your bathroom, once that project starts there is an obligation that that material be handled through the private carting industry and be collected by a registered hauler and disposed of at a licensed transfer station. I will say one of the things that we have identified as a potential gap, as we have been thinking about your colleague CM Hankerson's bill on the proper disposal of construction and demolition waste, is that...
...it is not super easy if you are renovating an office building or converting an office building to residential — you are hiring dozens or hundreds of loads of private carters to come in. But if you own a house and you are just getting your bathroom done, that amount of material may not be enough to call up a truck and have them come and get it. So there is a gap in terms of the industry's ability and the regulatory framework's ability to offer that service at that scale. That is something that, as we consider that bill — which we are thankful that he introduced — I think we need to look for ways to fill that gap.
Are there any marketing materials or any information for both situations? So like if I am a resident cleaning out my apartment, it is okay to leave your stuff out — because I am sure a lot of homeowners oftentimes do not want to leave all the trash out because they think they will get a fine. Same with small contractors who are not aware that there are carting companies to pick it up. Is there any type of information that we can share with constituents to say, hey, this is the proper way to do this?
Yeah, we have materials for both and we would be happy to share that with your office.
And I know I said I had two but I have one more, on behalf of my children. Litter is out of control and my babies remind me constantly — my kids saying, "Mommy, what are you going to do about this?" I am just thinking back to when I was young: you knew not to throw trash on the ground, it was just understood. And I believe there were fines — I do not even know if we have fines anymore. Are we doing anything proactively to encourage more New Yorkers to stop throwing their trash on the ground? And even more specifically, as these rainstorms are coming, the drains are backing up and there is a lot of flooding, particularly in my district and other areas of Queens, because of trash.
So I think people today still know that they should not throw things on the ground. I do not think that has changed. It is...
...because when people see trash they are like, okay, I can just throw this down too.
Yeah, that is part of the issue — keeping it clean to the point where you think twice before you add your litter.
Yeah, I fully share your children's frustration and your frustration. I think one of the things that we are endeavoring to achieve is a sense of pride and ownership in our communities, and I think that is the most effective way we can solve this problem. Because again, I think everyone understands you are not supposed to throw things on the ground all across New York City, and yet we see people do it. It is only when people think that they might get called out by their neighbors, or they might get called out by their kids, or they see that the street is clean and if they drop one thing on the street it then goes from clean to dirty, that they change their perspective. So we are thinking through what are the many different mechanisms that we can use to achieve that sense of ownership and pride in our communities, and look forward to working with you on how we can do that in your district specifically. Thank you.
And I will just add that there are still fines for littering. The City Council did reduce those fines pretty substantially — not this Council — and we would be happy to have a conversation around increasing them.
Thank you. I would love to have those conversations too. And I also think we need to piggyback off of your point. I think one of the things that I have seen in the community is it is not the older folks that are littering, it is the younger kids — the middle schoolers, the high schoolers — because they did not have the campaigns that we had when we were growing up. We remember all the ads: "Don't litter," "Don't trash" — all of that. They did not grow up with any of that. So to us that is the issue. I do not necessarily know if it is true for all of the generations after us, so maybe there is an opportunity for a new marketing campaign. But alas, I will now turn it over to CM Vernikov.
Thank you very much, Chair. Really great points. Maybe both my colleagues and I would just add, Commissioner, to the couple of solutions you mentioned — just greater enforcement and fines. We have this issue in the district all the time. But other than that, I really want to thank the Department of Sanitation for being so great and wonderful. A couple of questions I have — just two questions. What policies could encourage developers and contractors to reuse materials rather than dispose of them?
That is a great question and something that in our draft Solid Waste Management Plan, which we hope to finalize very shortly, we started to dig into and we are...
...doing a lot of work right now with the Economic Development Corporation around those kinds of deconstruction rather than demolition incentives. I will let Jen speak to the details there.
Yes. As the Commissioner mentioned, the Solid Waste Management Plan is the first time we are really shining a light on this material stream. In addition, the Council has included in their upcoming waste characterization law the requirement for characterizing the waste stream for this sector, and we think that will be really informative as far as developing programs and policies to target specific material types that have the highest value in recovery as part of the theme of this hearing.
Preliminarily, we are seeing things including asphalt, concrete, and perhaps even glass from construction and demolition as materials that can be most easily circulated and reused within our infrastructure here in the City, because the technology exists and the companies exist that do this work and find ways to close those loops. We are continuing to engage both with EDC, as the Commissioner mentioned, as well as the Mayor's Office of Management and Budget. We have put together a workshop this fall where all the capital construction agencies will be convening to take a closer look at many of these opportunities, and we hope that that workshop will, as part of our Solid Waste Management Plan implementation, inform specific programs and policies that we should adopt to increase the recovery of these materials.
Okay, thank you. The other question I have is about plastics. In Ukraine, there is a plastics factory that manufactured a lot of plastic products, so I actually know how dangerous it is to eat from plastics, and God forbid some people microwave plastic — I have seen it myself. So are there particular types of plastic packaging that present greater concerns in New York City's food system? If you could address that a little bit, whether it is packaging, bottled beverages, food preparation equipment...
...storage containers, or something else. Thank you. That is a fantastic question.
And certainly we have heard a lot of conversation in the last few years around PFAS and other forever chemicals like that, that are additives to plastic and other products that certainly have health impacts. As far as the health implications of just different types of plastics, that is something that I think we would have to defer to our colleagues at the Health Department on. Our expertise is really on what happens to those products once we collect them and whether we are able to remanufacture them into new things. But certainly there have been, I think, growing concerns expressed around the health implications of the amount of plastics that New Yorkers use. Thank you.
And then I am just going to turn it over to CM Louis.
Thank you, Chair. Appreciate it. And thank you, Commissioner, to you and your team for being here. Just building on some of the questions that CM Thomas-Henry had, it is just one quick question. I wanted to know: is the agency planning to promote and share information about bulk pickup? I think most homeowners, particularly in my district, they do not know about bulk pickup unless they get an email from my office or they come to a community board meeting, and you know that limits the amount of people that come to those meetings. I wonder if the agency is thinking about a mass promotion and marketing campaign about bulk pickups. Maybe that could diminish some of the...
...numbers. Yeah, I think that is a great idea. We did quite a bit of education around bulk collection as part of the rollout of our composting program, because the set-out days for some New Yorkers did change as we rolled out that program. We are using a dual-bin truck to collect the compostable material and trash side by side, so we asked that folks set out their bulk material on the non-recycling day of the week. But we certainly can work with your office on an education campaign around bulk collection. That is a good idea. That would be super...
...helpful. And my last question: we had a pilot composting site in my district that the district really enjoyed, but as of this year those sites were removed. We had it for about two years and really enjoyed having those sites. At the Flatbush Junction we had one, and another one that was in East Flatbush, and those sites were removed. I wanted to know if there was any way I could work with the agency to either get those sites back, or if there were any other programs that the agency provides to see if we could actually expand...
...composting in our district. As we are having this conversation about safe disposal and waste management, if we could get an actual program in the district.
Yeah, I think we would be happy to work with you on those composting sites. I will just reiterate: we have a universal curbside composting program, so we pick up compostable material from every single residential building in New York City at least once a week. So I think that is the first option that we encourage people to use. But we will reach out and have a conversation around how we can increase participation in your district. Thank you so much.
CM Louis. Speaking of composting, given that you mentioned Rikers and the opportunity for composting there, I wanted to know: are there any other islands or City-owned land that you or the department are looking at for potential spots for composting as well?
We are certainly always looking. The challenge for the rest of New York City is that we are competing against other potential uses for City-owned property or even for privately owned property, and in many cases there are better uses. Housing, for example, is a better use for much of the City's land than compost facilities. So I think that is why we have really zeroed in on Rikers Island, because it is not really appropriate for residential use. It is a very large place and it is physically separated from other neighborhoods, so it is sort of ripe for that kind of industrial use.
We are also always looking at this as a regional issue, because there is a substantial amount of property outside of New York City that could be a better location for a composting facility. So we are always in conversations with the private industry around the potential development of new sites that could take New York City material.
Is there any discussion about some of the smaller islands and just turning them into a composting island, like Brother Island? You know, any of those smaller places?
Many of the other islands are either protected as environmental conservation habitats, or they are property of the federal government, or there are other kinds of restrictions on their use. So there are complications with everything. But if you have ideas, we are certainly happy to look at them.
Great. I want to talk about Int 0256-2026. This is CM Hudson's bill in relation to requiring the commissioner to study the feasibility and potential environmental effects of a recycling mandate for household textiles. In prior testimony, the department highlighted that wet textiles are unrecyclable. Can the agency provide additional information on why that is the case for textiles but not other waste streams like paper, and with the requirement of citywide containerization, is this still a concern?
I do not know that we have testified that they are unrecyclable. I think the department's position in the past has been that curbside collection of textiles presents some really unique challenges that may be difficult to overcome. We have actually on two different occasions piloted a curbside collection of textiles and sort of proven out what these challenges look like.
The first was a pilot that we did maybe a decade ago in parts of Brooklyn, where we did the curbside collection. We actually sent pink bags out to residents and said, you know, put all your textiles in these pink bags, we are coming on this day and we will pick them up. We found a couple of things there. One, if it rains, it really destroys the quality of the textiles and the ability to reuse those textiles, so then you are automatically down-cycling them into lesser products. Number two, the operational barriers to running a program like that I think would make it very expensive to scale.
We also had an appointment-based program, I think around 2022 or 2023, on Staten Island, where Staten Islanders could make appointments for the collection of textiles. We saw really low demand for that program. So I think both of those indicate that curbside collection may not be the way to go. But we are open to exploring other collection models, and I think if this bill were to pass, the appropriate space to do that would be as part of our next waste characterization study, which is due in 2028.
You said earlier — correct me if I am wrong — 31 buildings were enrolled in the textile recycling program? It is 2,500 buildings. 2,500. Yes.
But those 2,500 buildings represent a substantial number of...
...actual units of residential housing. So what is the average number of textile collection bins distributed to residential properties enrolled in the program?
It depends on the size of the building. That 2,500 number could include larger buildings that have multiple bins, but for most buildings we find that one bin is sufficient. We pick it up whenever it is full. If it fills up once a week, we will pick it up once a week. If it fills up once every six months, we will pick it up every six months.
Where are the textile collection bins in these buildings generally located? Yes, where are they generally located?
Yeah, often they are... was that a yes or no...
...question? Often they are...
...located in the basements or in the trash storage room or something like that. I have also seen them in some buildings in the parking garage if they have one. So it really varies based on the space they have.
And what kind of outreach is done to a property owner about the existence of this program?
The outreach is part of our standard apartment building outreach. Any time we are having conversations with a multi-unit building, we talk to them about the textile collection program, the electronics collection program, recycling requirements, and the requirement to have a brown bin. So that is all part of one package of outreach that we do.
Of the eligible program...
...participant categories — so apartment buildings with 10-plus units, office buildings, commercial industries, schools and nonprofit institutions — can the department provide a breakdown of the amount of textiles collected by each participant...
...category? We do not have that with us today, but we can certainly dig into the data and provide you whatever we can.
Awesome. And can the department provide a timeline for the launch of the small residential buildings textile recycling pilot program?
Yeah, we are working with our vendor right now to look at all the details of how that is going to work, and we are hoping within the next year.
Awesome. You mentioned a partner originally with the residential textile program. Who is that partner?
Yeah, we partner with a B Corp called Helpsy. They are doing the textile collection.
Okay. One of the things with the residential buildings — I am curious. So I used to have in my building, for example, a Housing Works textile recycling program that had tabs that you could take off and there was a tax write-off when you donated your textiles. I remember that time. Now any time I pass by the textile bin it is usually rather empty, but there is a brand new sign that says it is now the Department of Sanitation one and there is no tax write-off. So I am curious to know: is there a difference in the buildings in the areas where buildings are participating in these programs? Did you have buildings before that had a lot of textile recycling and now do not, because they are not getting — for example, is the Upper West Side not going to participate? Why would they not get their tax write...
...off? I think a couple of things there. Our prior contract was with Housing Works, which is a nonprofit. Our new one is with Helpsy. It is a B Corp, so they are not technically a nonprofit, so you cannot do the tax write-offs. They do work with Goodwill and a lot of other partners, and a lot of the clothing does end up going to nonprofits, but because they have the B Corp status they cannot actually do the...
...tax donation receipt, unfortunately. I think the other thing that is happening is that our new partner has been doing much more frequent collection, so you might be seeing the bin empty because it is getting emptied more frequently instead of overflowing. We actually think that is a good thing.
Yeah, and I will just add: the previous contract with Housing Works — they really struggled to match the scale of the program. It is not as big as we would like it to be, and there were points toward the end of our agreement with Housing Works where they were subcontracting the collections to Helpsy anyway. So when we put the contract out for rebid, I think it made sense to...
...go with a provider that could accommodate the scale of the program and that really excelled in the operational capacity. Housing Works is a fantastic organization and they do a lot of really good work, but logistics at that scale I think was a challenge for them. Thank you for that. But yeah, that was just a thing — if the tax benefit means anything for folks. And then finally...
...does the department track the volume of delivery courier bags, such as those used by last-mile delivery services, that it collects and disposes of? And then under the existing commercial waste rules, does the department have the authority to hold last-mile delivery companies responsible for abandoned and unreasonable...
...textile waste? That is a great question. I will say on a formal basis, no, we do not track the number of those last-mile delivery courier bags that we see. I personally take a photograph every time I see one, so I have my own little side project there. I think anyone who spends time walking around New York City has probably seen them discarded all across the City. So it is something that we are looking into — whether we have existing tools to be able to hold those companies accountable, and if our existing tools are not sufficient, we are certainly interested in working with the Council to develop new tools that we can use. Hunts Point is a great artist community. We have an Amazon last-mile delivery facility there, and if you ever want to throw a little art show with all of your photos, we are happy to...
...help. I would like to now recognize CM Virginia Maloney, CM Ty Hankerson in some updated swag, and CM Santosuosso...
...Wilson. Thank you, Chair. Always repping Hunts Point. Good morning. Thank you for being here. I just have a few questions. On textiles — when you do your outreach to the residential buildings about potentially taking on a bin, what are some of the reasons that the buildings reject it?
Yeah, so I think the selling point to having a bin is that the laundry rooms and basements of a lot of these buildings are kind of full of textiles anyway and it is a mess, and having the bin makes it cleaner and tidier. So a lot of the building supers really appreciate that. Some of the challenges are like potentially having stairs, which can be a problem sometimes if there is not an elevator to get the bin down there. Space is the other thing. We have actually done some research and are totally open to ideas around another container besides the bin — something smaller. That is definitely something that we are looking at and continuing to explore.
When I first heard about the textile recycling program — I think it was on a Zoom call — I did not know it existed. I have since learned that there are some buildings in Bay Ridge that have them in the residential buildings, but we actually have no drop-off sites through the Helpsy partnership. Are there ways to try to encourage people to participate in the residential program or have some of these bins in more public sites? Are there incentives that you can think of? I understand Helpsy is not a nonprofit, so there is no tax write-off. Is there a possibility of a sanitation credit that could be applied against future fines and fees, or is there some other incentive that you can think of that could encourage participation?
Yeah, I think that is a very interesting question. You can, if you donate your textiles through Goodwill or many thrift stores that are nonprofits, you can still claim that tax write-off. So I would encourage you, I would encourage all New Yorkers that if that is a priority for them, that they should continue to do that. But certainly we can work with you on thinking about new creative incentives for how to encourage that kind of behavior.
Do you know how many City-owned buildings have the textile recycling bins?
It is in the report that there are some in schools. I do not have those numbers in front of me. There are a few in schools and we of course have them in our sanitation offices. Okay.
Great. And then my only other question was about going back to the dumping. CM Thomas-Henry was speaking about our district. It deals with a lot of corner dumping on baskets, which blows my mind because as you said, Commissioner, it is like we will pick up the trash, the service is available to you. Have you identified gaps and approaches to some of the corner dumping that we could help move legislation along or try to address in any way?
Yeah, I think yes, there are certainly gaps. I think in your district in particular, and many other districts, in commercial and one or two-story residential above, there may not be a good place for the official New York City bin, which is now required as of this week.
So people have just been used to taking their trash to the corner litter basket, which is not allowed. I think when we roll out the containerized bins, one of the places that we really want to look at for the opportunity for shared containers is on streets exactly like that, where potentially we could put one bin for the entire street, give access cards to every resident on that street and have them use that instead of other kinds of containers for their waste set-out. That would really streamline things and give them a designated place that they can put their trash without having to manage a bin without any space to do so.
So that is certainly something that we are thinking about. As far as enforcement tools, we at this point have a lot of tools at our disposal. If we see any identifying information either in a litter basket or adjacent to a litter basket, we can write a ticket based on that and we do so pretty frequently. So I do not think it is a matter of having more tools. I think it is just the resources to be out there and do the enforcement.
Thank you, and I will turn it over to CM Shanel Thomas-Henry.
Thank you, Chair. I want to go back to the composting, or just all organic waste processing, anticipated for Rikers Island. Was there a needs assessment done for that, or will there be?
So at this point we do not have a formal capital project or really any specific plans for doing so. It is something that we are exploring, and I know that the City, particularly under this administration, has been moving more and more decommissioned jail properties from DOC to DCAS to begin the process of planning for the post-jail future of Rikers Island. There would certainly be an environmental review done as part of that.
Okay. I just want to flag that although the island itself is isolated, there is currently only one roadway in and it goes to a residential neighborhood. In addition to the residents, there is a baseball field at that corner. I am not sure if you are aware, but the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey with LaGuardia Airport uses what they call Ingram's Mountain, adjacent to it, for for-hire vehicle parking currently. So just be cognizant of that, and I would recommend collaborating with them on any movement out of there from a traffic perspective, and then looking at any other ways of getting the waste over there, like the waterways and what have you.
Yeah, absolutely. I think the Department of Sanitation has for a long time been using our City's waterways to move material around. Most of our recyclables and much of our trash moves on the water today. We would certainly look for opportunities to move compostable material by water as well to any potential future Rikers composting facility.
Okay. And I did just want to end on a comment. It seems to be a recurring theme that sanitation does a lot of great programs, but many people just are not aware of them. So just really thinking about your marketing campaign — I mean, the Mayor is great on social media, I hear about potholes from here to LA — so just thinking of getting creative on letting the public know about a lot of the programs, encouraging them not to litter and all the things. And I want to shout out Frank, he is amazing, and you guys do a great job. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you. We are always looking for free ways to get out the word. We unfortunately do not have a public education budget, so every conversation that we have with buildings has to happen through sort of organic and natural means. We do a lot of work on social media to try to get the word out. We do a lot of work through the traditional media to try to get the word out. But unlike other agencies, we do not have an advertising budget, we do not have a marketing budget that we can lean on. So that is something that we would love to work with the Council on as part of the budget next year. I love the idea of agencies having advertising budgets. Okay, we will circle...
...back. I just want to talk briefly about CM Gutiérrez's questions. If you can finish these questions, I can ask them again. It is in relation to the enhanced street cleaning and litter basket services in proposed nightlife districts. Can the department provide a head count for the Targeted Neighborhood Task Force and the Precision Cleaning Initiative? Are these teams exclusive or is there an overlap between the task force and the initiative? And for the task force, how are staff assigned to neighborhoods, and likewise for the initiative?
I do not have those numbers directly in front of me. I will try to pull them up. Yeah, we do not have those numbers directly in front of us, but I will say that the Targeted Neighborhood Task Force and Precision Cleaning Initiative, even though those were funded as separate programs, they now operate as much more fungible assets. So there is not necessarily a specific frequency or schedule with which we are using them. We identify conditions that need to be cleaned and then we draw from that pool of resources as we are cleaning those conditions.
Does the department conduct any late night or early morning street cleaning or litter basket servicing? What is the frequency of these services and at what dates and times of the week? I know some of this because cleaning is from 12:00 to 2:00 or 3:00 AM. So yes, we do quite a lot of overnight litter basket service because, one, it is the best time for us to move around the City and get the work done quickly, and two, because we can come through after the last of the evening and clean things up before people start to go to work or school in the morning. So we find that a really effective time to do so.
I would say probably the one time that is the most challenging for us is late Saturday night into Sunday morning. Sunday is a regular workday, so any work that we do on Sundays is double-time overtime and it is sort of pulled out of a separate pool of resources. So we do have a slightly lower number of resources on that 12:00 to 8:00 shift on Sunday than we would on the rest of the week.
I am curious about that. Is there a standard workweek for every sanitation employee even though we have to clean the streets seven days a week? Or is it Monday through Friday? Monday through Saturday? Monday through Saturday. Okay, interesting.
Has there been no discussion on just staggering workers' workweeks, like some people work Tuesday through Sunday, some people work Monday through Friday? Yes, so that is the practice for covering the sixth day, because each individual works five days over the course of a six-day period. So we do stagger the shifts. I think that a conversation about having Sunday be a scheduled workday would have to be something that we would bring up as part of labor negotiations with the Teamsters in the next round of negotiations, which we expect will begin in the next year or so. Okay.
Does the department already provide other supplemental cleaning services to community districts with a higher density of pedestrian foot traffic or nightlife establishments? And could you describe the extent of those services and the resources dedicated to such programs?
Yeah, we absolutely tailor our service levels based on a number of factors, and that can include the density of bus and subway routes in an area, the amount of commuting traffic, the amount of pedestrian traffic, and other kinds of land uses in a district.
So I think that is what drives a lot of our resource allocation today. Nightlife is certainly a part of that. This was maybe eight or nine years ago, two administrations ago, when they created the Office of Nightlife as part of Cultural Affairs. There was a real push to reallocate some resources to those nightlife districts and some of that is still in place today, particularly on the Lower East Side. But I think, as this Bill indicates, there is more opportunity, particularly in parts of the outer boroughs that are now growing nightlife districts. Hunts Point is one, I think East Williamsburg and Bushwick is another, where there is certainly room for more resources if we had the funding.
Now Brooklyn has taken the throne.
I mean, it is the reality. Manhattan nightlife, step it up. And that is no shade, it is no shade, it is just we have to be real about what is happening. How has the implementation of commercial waste zones impacted the amount of waste collected at public litter baskets and during street cleaning in areas with high pedestrian foot traffic?
I would not say that we have seen a real measurable impact on litter basket collections as a result of the rollout of commercial waste zones. If anything, I think we have better data on the commercial establishments and limiting the improper disposal those establishments are doing. But I think for a long time that improper disposal has been happening by residents and so it does not really have an impact there.
And before we go back to co-digestion, I just want to circle back quickly to the composting on Rikers Island question. Do we know how many parcels the Department of Corrections has transferred, or will transfer, once Rikers is a figment of our imagination?
There are two quite sizable parcels that have been transferred to DCAS, as well as a number of jail facilities that have been decommissioned and transferred. I think the challenge with the jail facilities...
...as we have had conversations with DCAS and others, is you have to demolish the buildings that are there, and that is sort of the first step. So I know that the City through DCAS is looking at opportunities to begin that demolition process. But we are predominantly looking at the two large contiguous parcels that have been transferred.
Is there no way to actually demolish all of the jails? Is there no way to activate, you know, maybe gut the inside and turn it into something fresh and new? I do not think you could use any of the existing buildings for composting purposes because you need large open spaces for composting and jails are not known for those large open spaces. Okay.
Turning our attention to co-digestion. What is the average daily collection in pounds of source-separated residential organic waste? Can the department provide an estimate of the amount of organic waste diverted from landfills due to curbside collection of residential organic waste?
Absolutely. Year to date this year we have collected 80,000 tons of organics. I do not have the average daily in front of me here. We are trying to do the math quickly. We will get back to you with the average daily, but it is 80,000 tons so far this year.
Can the department provide an estimate — not the daily — what is the City's current capacity to process residential and commercial organic waste by anaerobic digestion? And how might this capacity improve in the next 10 years?
Yeah, so I will let Jen start and then maybe we will pass it over to Jane at DEP.
The department has a number of transfer stations and processing facilities that we send the collected curbside organics to. There are actually eight distinct locations. Many of them are transfer stations, so from there they move the material to either a composting facility or an anaerobic digestion facility, maybe in-city, maybe out-of-city. As the Commissioner mentioned, we are part of a regional network of managing resources including organics, so some of the capacity that ultimately processes the material that we collect is outside of the City. Of the two anaerobic digestion facilities that are being used today for the material that is collected, one is in New Jersey and the other is the Department of Environmental Protection's Newtown Creek facility in Brooklyn. And Jane...
...that facility is processing, on an average basis, so at the Newtown Creek facility we can currently process about 250 tons a day of material, so 500,000 pounds a day. And that is...
...that is from both the Department of Sanitation but also from the commercial sector. It is typically two thirds from sanitation and about a third from the commercial sector, but that can vary seasonally or when schools are in session, things like that. And speaking of Newtown Creek, how much...
...renewable natural gas is produced annually by the facility? I do not have that number offhand, but I do know that it is enough to heat about 6,500 homes in the City.
And so the City just uses that renewable heat to heat homes? And is it just sold within the City? So the actual...
...molecules of methane, the natural gas that leaves Newtown Creek, are distributed into National Grid's natural gas distribution system as renewable natural gas, as a non-fossil alternative to natural gas. There are different programs to monetize the environmental attributes of the renewable natural gas, and so currently...
...National Grid is participating in the federal Renewable Fuel Standard, and so that allows them to...
...get revenue for being able to provide a renewable resource within the fossil infrastructure. We work with them to try and maximize that so that they are able to pay off the large capital investment that they had made in their system sooner. In 2023 we solicited...
...bio-digestion. Can you provide any updates pertaining to that solicitation?
Yeah, sure. So yes, we put it out and, as you might be aware, we have 14 in-city wastewater treatment plants and all of them have anaerobic digesters. So we have 75 anaerobic digesters spread across all five boroughs. As a result of that solicitation we did get a lot of really interesting feedback.
Key opportunities from...
...things that could happen within the next five to ten years to things that could happen fifty years out. One of the key opportunities that was identified, and we had kind of already been working on anticipating that it was going to come, is that we are building these new digesters at the Hunts Point facility in the South Bronx, which you are familiar with. There is excess biogas that is going to be generated there. We use the gas to heat our buildings seasonally and also to heat the digesters year round, but there is excess biogas and that biogas can be beneficially used. So we actually would like to replicate the model of Newtown Creek to be able to take that excess biogas and convert it to renewable natural gas as a non-fossil alternative.
And how much does it cost to operate an anaerobic digester?
The anaerobic digesters themselves — I do not have those numbers offhand. I can see if we can actually tease...
...out those numbers from the operation of our different facilities. Can you provide a cost breakdown for the Newtown Creek co-digestion pilot?
The pilot has been done as a program that is at no cost to the City, borne by our partner Waste Management. So we actually...
...do not have those specific numbers.
And how does co-digestion of organic waste impact operations?
What costs does the biogas processing facility contribute to? You have already spoken about how you have shared costs with Waste Management and National Grid. Is there any other ways that you share costs with them as well?
So the actual processing of the biogas is similar to the contract that we have with Waste Management where it is at no cost to the City. We have an agreement with National Grid where it is also at no cost to the City. However, within the processing itself there are energy costs for heating up the food waste. It only makes up about 10% of the total mass that we are putting into the digesters, but there is heat associated with that.
And then in the actual processing, the biogas itself is not an additional cost to us, but the residual — the amount of the food waste that does not convert to biogas — it is about 25% of the incoming mass, and that becomes biosolids. That has a disposal cost and a recycling cost associated with it. There are also different constituents of the food waste such as nitrogen, and we have sensitivities from a nitrogen standpoint, so we have to make sure that we are managing the nitrogen appropriately. There are costs associated with that. We have a cost offset that we receive from Waste Management that covers the costs of the additional processing of the additional food waste.
Moving on to the Hunts Point Energy Recovery Facility — not new, but updated and improved. As of 2025, infrastructure upgrades to the Hunts Point facility were approximately 75% complete. What is the current status of the site improvement work and when are the anaerobic digesters expected to be operational?
I believe that the construction is supposed to end by the end of the year, and those digesters should be up and running by the next calendar year. There are follow-up contracts to that particular contract, so they were in design and going to be put out to bid — a new contract for energy efficiency improvements and also odor control.
Does the 250-ton-per-day processing capacity for organic waste include biosolids recovered on site? If so, how much capacity remains for organic waste from the curbside and smart bin streams?
At Hunts Point specifically, we are still studying that. We know that within the digester capacity we could potentially do up to 400 tons a day of food waste.
We need, on processing, to look at that as just one piece of the puzzle. As I had mentioned earlier, we have to make sure that we are managing the nitrogen properly, so we are doing an assessment of how much additional nitrogen we can handle within our system without impacting our waterways. That is a study that is ongoing right now and we are trying to get a final number on it, but it will most likely be south of 400 tons a day.
OK. And how will the organics processed at the facility be transported to the site for processing? Will the waste need to be stored on site prior to co-digestion, and if so, what steps will DEP take to limit the impact on the residents that live next to the facility?
So there are a few pieces to this, and Jen might want to weigh in on this as well. The food waste that is collected curbside or coming from private haulers — there is a really important step that needs to take place where there is pre-processing. For the Newtown Creek facility, Waste Management has a transfer station where they do this pre-processing, where they take out all of the physical contamination and then macerate and thin it down so that it is pumpable. They can then put it into tanker trucks that can go the mile from their facility to our facility, and then it gets put into a tank. These are all enclosed vessels, so there is not a tremendous amount of odor concern with them. Then it goes into our storage tank — that happens in batches, obviously, because of the truck deliveries — and then from the storage tank it is evenly brought over to the digesters, because the microbiome in the digester needs a steady diet of material. That is how that process works.
For the Hunts Point facility, we are interested in looking at alternatives for transportation. It would be great if we could partner with the food market next door, as that would be a very easy transfer. We are also interested in — and have been talking about — ways to move this material, as Commissioner Anderson had mentioned. New York City has this long history of moving material by waterways and we would like to see that as well. We really want to keep any impacts to the local community at a minimum.
That was my very next question. I am really excited to hear about the partnership, especially with the markets next door. Will marine and barge transfer be utilized for this purpose? If so, approximately how much waste are we looking at that will be transported to the site via barge each day, and how much potentially via truck if we have to use that?
Yeah, so we do not have those details yet. It is something we definitely need to figure out first — how much material can we actually take in, and what are the ways to bring it in. There would need to be an environmental assessment of how that works as well, so there are logistics to be considered and then also the environmental assessment.
If we are unlucky and have to be transporting via truck, I just want to be cognizant and understand approximately how many trucks per day will be transporting organics to be processed at this site. With that, what are the projected air pollution and carbon emission ramifications associated with trucking waste to the facility? Given the already high asthma rates in my district — I do not have to tell people about those — are any mitigation efforts being considered to address any increase in truck traffic to the site?
So knowing that we receive about eight to ten trucks a day at the Newtown Creek facility, if we were to actually do the full 400 tons a day at Hunts Point we might be talking about 15 or so trucks a day. That is kind of off the top of my head — it is not an official number — if we were to move all of it via truck. I think there are different alternatives to be considered for trucks as far as, you know, if it is a short haul, is there a way to electrify the trucks? Could they be CNG instead of diesel? Could they use RNG? There are different ways to do this so that the emissions are kept at a minimum.
Yeah, really appreciate that. Will this site also be digesting engineered bio-slurry produced by Waste Management?
So we will put this out for a solicitation. We put out a request for proposals back in the spring for an owner's adviser to help us navigate how we are going to contract the work at Hunts Point for both co-digestion and the gas-to-grid system. We currently have, as I mentioned before, two contracts at Newtown Creek. They are good contracts, but they were put together right when this industry was very new.
In the ensuing 14 years or so the market has really matured, and so we are getting an owner's adviser to make sure that we are making the right decisions for the City, for DEP, and leveraging the lessons learned from municipalities across the world that have been doing this type of work.
So it is unclear whether it would ultimately be a partnership with Waste Management or another partner, but we are anticipating that we would like to have an integrated partner that does both — that brings us the pre-processed food-based material...
...what Waste Management calls engineered bio-slurry, or something of that ilk, that meets our specifications for treatment, and would also be able to clean up the biogas for beneficial use.
And approximately how much renewable natural gas will be produced per day? What proportion of that methane will be used on site and how will the remainder be utilized?
I believe...
...that, again, anticipating the maximum amount of food-based material we talked about, which is about 400 tons a day — let me just quickly calculate... I do not have that number in front of me. I will get back to you on the total number, but it is probably in the same range as what we have for Newtown Creek, which is enough gas to heat 6,500 homes. As far as how much is used on site, it varies seasonally, but I think it will be similar to Newtown Creek — on average about 50 or 60% would be used on site.
Nitrogenous compounds are generated from anaerobic digestion operations and they can be released into the air during dewatering and storage, with all the unpleasant smells leading to a deterioration in the quality of life in neighboring communities. Are there any odor control solutions that have been designed into the digester at the Hunts Point facility? In general, has the Department of Sanitation noticed a frequency of odor complaints at any of the other currently operating digester facilities in the City, and what agency handles those complaints?
The world wants to know. So I do know that the current...
So the follow-on contract to the digester contract at Hunts Point does have odor control associated with it, and that is specifically for the solids handling portion of the wastewater treatment process — that is where the thickening process and the storage process occur. That particular odor control system is being upgraded as part of the next round of construction that we are going to do.
As far as the additional facilities, I am actually unfamiliar with the odor complaints that have been received associated with the solids handling. The digestion itself is a closed, containerized...
You are right — as you move material over to dewatering there could be odors. All of our dewatering buildings have odor control associated with them.
But there could be excursions here or there, and I know that people do send complaints to 311 and they are very responsive to them.
They immediately go out and monitor the area to look for where the concerns are — whether it is just something left open as they are moving bins in and out — and then they tend to rectify that quickly. But not sure if there are additional details.
Yeah, so I will add that both facilities and public and private transfer stations are regulated by the State Department of Environmental Conservation, and they take odor complaints very seriously. I think that is sort of the first avenue for those sorts of things. The Department of Sanitation also regulates private transfer stations and we conduct inspections on a very regular basis — at least weekly — of every transfer station in New York City. One of the things we are looking for is whether odors or other things that are happening inside the transfer station are exiting the transfer station in any way, and that is enforcement that we do on a very regular basis.
Yeah, just because that transfer station is next to our only big park in Hunts Point, and that is actually our only big park in the school district, so making sure that people can actually enjoy our park.
I really want to thank all of you for your testimony today and for minding my tardiness. Thank you so much. We will be taking a short five-minute break before the public session.
Welcome back. I now open the hearing for public testimony. I remind members of the public that this is a government proceeding and that decorum shall be observed at all times. As such, members of the public shall remain silent at all times when not testifying. The witness table is reserved for people who wish to testify. No video recording or photography is allowed from the witness table. Further, members of the public may not present audio or video recordings as testimony but may submit a transcript of such recordings to the Sergeant at Arms for inclusion in the hearing record. If you wish to speak at today's hearing, please fill out an appearance card with the Sergeant at Arms to be recognized. When recognized, you will have two minutes to speak on today's hearing topics: Waste Valorization and the Circular Economy, or any of the legislation on our agenda today. If you have a written statement or additional written testimony you wish to submit for the record, please provide a copy of that testimony to the Sergeant at Arms. You may also email written testimony to testimony@council.nyc.gov within 72 hours of this hearing. Audio and video recordings will not be accepted. Songs will not be accepted.
I will now call on our first panel. I would like to bring up Eric Goldstein, Akash Shirat... I did not want to ruin it and I ruined it. Claire Mifflin, La Shawn... We will start over.
With Eric. Thank you. Good morning, Chair Sanchez, and welcome to your new committee. My name is Eric Goldstein. I am the New York City Environment Director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Our organization supports Int 0256-2026, which would mandate a study of the source separation of textiles and their collection by the Department of Sanitation. Textiles make up between 5 and 6% of the City's municipal solid waste. Their manufacture and disposal is an environmental problem, a climate problem and a budgetary burden for New York City residents.
We make one important friendly suggestion to the proposed language of Int 0256-2026. In addition to studying the possibility of textile collection by the Department, we urge the Council to direct DSNY to analyze other options for textile collection, including expansion of the current system in place for some multi-story buildings now running in cooperation, as you have heard, with HELPS and the New York State Industries for the Disabled. Additionally, we recommend that the Council ensure that the Bill language directs DSNY to examine what happens to textiles that are collected for recycling and whether and how those materials are actually reused or recycled.
We also support Int 0970-2026, which would enhance street cleaning and litter basket service in certain New York City neighborhoods, and the two resolutions before the Council today. But the most pressing matter for this committee to engage in in the weeks ahead, we respectfully suggest, is to review and enhance the Draft Solid Waste Management Plan prepared by DSNY.
This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. The current draft prepared by DSNY needs help and in several important areas is insufficiently supportive of the Council's long-term goals on sustainability and zero waste, and its generalized language is too amorphous to play an important role as it has in the last two Solid Waste Management Plans. We look forward to working with you in enhancing this document and in that mission. Thank you.
Thank you so much. My name is Hannah Lou. I am a homeowner in the Bronx. I own a three-family where I also reside.
I am here today to talk about containerization, specifically two aspects that, if properly addressed by Sanitation, could go a long way in supporting homeowners. The first has to do with theft of cans. You cannot put something loose on the curb in New York City and think it is not going to get stolen. They are going to get stolen, might have been stolen multiple times. While I do resent having to spend time and money replacing the cans, the real insult to injury comes when, after a theft recently, I was unable to replace the can in time for my next collection day. I was then given a ticket when I put the black bag on the curb. I went to the OATH hearing. I explained the theft. They credited my testimony and found that theft was not a defense. So I had to pay to replace the can, I had to pay for the ticket, and I had to spend time on both.
I am asking this committee and Sanitation to work with OATH and create an official defense of theft of can as a defense to that violation. I am also asking for the ability to report the theft to Sanitation so that they will not ticket me while I am in the process of trying to replace it.
The second item that I want to talk about has to do with these momentary, short-term influxes, spikes in volume. Normally I am in a small building and two cans is sufficient, but if you have a party, a holiday party, or you have tenants moving in and out, there might be this spike in trash. I cannot accommodate enough cans for that. Sanitation does not allow for exceptions for containerization. Their suggestion is that I store extra cans on my property to use during these momentary spikes. That is unreasonable. I am already storing two black bins, two recycling and a compost bin.
I am asking that this committee work with Sanitation to take a policy that used to be in place for bulk collection, where you could book a bulk collection online in advance. I am asking that we now use that to book a large-volume pickup in advance. If I have booked it and I put my black bags on the curb, I would not be ticketed because it is with Sanitation's knowledge and guidance. So this does not address everything with containerization, but these would help us. Thank you.
Next, can I have Claire? I suggested pilots for containerization for small buildings would solve that, and we really think that the Commissioner himself noted that if you live above a storefront, say in a walk-up, you do not have a trash bin often, so you use the little bin. He said that he will have a shared trash bin in the street for those residents.
But what about their recycling or composting? What I am asking him to do is to do a pilot for trash, recycling and composting, all of them, because I know very well residents above storefronts — the building owner cannot fit those bins in if there is a storefront on the ground floor and the residents just have to bring bags down. So he really should pilot it. I have suggested this multiple times. Trash-only infrastructure for containerization is just not the way we need to go. We know trash-only infrastructure incentivizes trash, and the Solid Waste Management Plan needs to look at containerization as part of the means to getting to higher diversion, not as a standalone thing, and just check if it makes diversion any worse.
I also want to say that community composting could be massively ramped up and tied into healthy soil, street tree care, and making our green spaces more vibrant and making people care more about their neighborhood. I would also like, on the circular economy, to just point out something Anna Sacks is also championing, which is a bulk set-out day. So instead of setting out bulk two days a week, different in each district, you would have one day in a district where all the furniture and stuff is set out so people would go shopping, essentially, to find this stuff. That is done in other cities, in Seattle I think very successfully. People know, "I need a new table, I will go out on Friday — this district has Friday" or this other district. And even providers come and get that. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Good afternoon. My name is Cher Avantika, and I am the residency planner with the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance. Founded in 1991, the Alliance is a nonprofit network that links 13 grassroots organizations from low-income neighborhoods and communities of color across the five boroughs in their struggle for environmental justice. I am here today to voice the Alliance's concerns about one particular aspect that was discussed about the City's approach to solid waste management.
We encourage the City to de-prioritize waste management solutions like anaerobic co-digestion at City wastewater resource recovery facilities, at the cost of expanding composting facilities across New York City, which could help establish green jobs among other numerous benefits. As Commissioner Anderson has mentioned, 24,000 million pounds of waste are produced every day, which requires massive transportation logistics and contributes to pollution impacts as this garbage is moved by privately owned and operated waste transfer stations along the waterfront. Data shows that the system is grossly unfair. Just four community districts still handle 75% of the City's private waste, and the majority of this waste passes through communities with the highest asthma rates, as you mentioned — the South Bronx, North Brooklyn and Southeast Queens.
Despite all of the benefits of composting, the City's composting infrastructure has not kept up with the collection of residential organics. Despite successful models we have seen at Fresh Kills, we are troubled to see the continued investment in sending collected organics to be co-digested with sewage sludge at the Newtown Creek facility, rather than building capacity for small and mid-scale composting facilities across the City. I know my time is nearly up, but I have a number of issues with anaerobic co-digestion and I will submit more detailed testimony in writing.
Your testimony will be read. Thank you so much. The first panel is relieved. Thank you. Next up, we would like to bring up Ryan Castalia. What has happened? Do we have two seconds? So just for this panel, the way that it is going to work is — because I know Spanish — we are going to give just proper two minutes, and two minutes, and then we will give you four minutes to say on the record what they said, and then you will have your own two minutes afterwards. So he is not getting extra time, everyone. He is not getting six minutes. It is just making sure that everyone can get the information.
I am Petra... Ahora, gracias. Yes... I am a canner. I do this work for personal reasons. I started doing this work because of a recommendation. It was a necessity because I could not find another type of work. This work helps me survive economically. It has helped me, but it is not enough. Everything has gone up. All our personal expenses have risen. Recently I lost my son and the costs are so high. They are always high and it is very hard. With a lot of strength we have to continue onward...
...with the circumstances that have befallen us. I am not alone. We have the hope that our community will recognize our work through making the deposit higher, and also through smaller things like leaving us bottles and cans to continue collecting. I want the community to allow us to participate by continuing to collect bottles and cans, and in recognizing the value of our work. We cannot do it alone. We are asking for your help to let us survive. And from Josefa Marin...
And now Ryan. So first, from Petra: Hello, my name is Petra and I am a canner. I do this work for personal reasons. I started doing this work because of a recommendation. It was a necessity because I could not find another type of work. This work helps me survive economically. It has helped me a lot, but it is not enough. Everything has gone up. All our personal expenses have risen. Recently I lost my son and the costs are so high. They are always high and it is very hard. With a lot of strength we have to continue onward. With 10 cents, the circumstances that have befallen us would be much relieved. And I am not alone. We have the hope that our community will recognize our work through making the deposit higher, and also through smaller things like leaving us bottles and cans to continue collecting. I want the community to allow us to participate by continuing to collect bottles and cans, and in recognizing the value of our work. We cannot do it alone. We are asking for your help to let us survive. And from Josefa Marin...
Hello, my name is Jose Marin. I am a canner for more than 20 years. I have the honor of having been elected by my peers to represent them, to come here and speak for them, as the President of the Alliance of Independent Recyclers of New York City. What can I say? It is hard to be a recycler. We go street to street in the rain and snow. We are constantly struggling.
We are here to ask that in this challenging time that we are all living, the City pushes the State to increase the bottle deposit, because today we need to collect quite a bit — double what we had to collect before in the years past, because the costs have all risen. Going to the supermarket costs us a great deal and everything is too expensive. It used to be that with $50 you could buy all the food you needed to feed your family, and today you only buy two or three things and it costs $50. Today we need to collect double from before to bring home the same food for our family. We need to work twice as hard.
We are asking you, who have the power to take action, to keep us in mind, to help us. We are here to help. We help the environment and contribute to our community. We would love to see the bottle deposit increased to 10 cents because it is a necessity. We offer a service to the community and we should be recognized for it. And now I will speak for myself. Thank you again.
My name is Ryan Castelli. I am with Can Can, a Brooklyn-based redemption center and nonprofit serving independent recyclers, or canners — the folks who collect the bottles and cans that others just throw away. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. New York City should pass Res 0362-2026 and full-throatedly support bottle bill expansion, and use every lever to urge the State to act. If successful, marginalized workers will have more opportunities, small businesses will thrive, and the City will save money, because the bottle bill works. Period. It has demonstrated its efficacy continuously for decades, resulting in the diversion of millions of tons of waste. It is our only extant form of extended producer responsibility policy and it produces unparalleled outcomes, and holds people who generate waste through disposable containers accountable. It is an elegant mechanism for environmental justice, creating opportunities for any New Yorker — even and especially the most marginalized — to participate in and directly benefit from community waste management. It helps create the sense of pride and ownership Commissioner Anderson mentioned earlier. New York City depends on the bottle bill, which since its implementation has created a 70% reduction in street litter. Canners are a ubiquitous and iconic part of our streetscape.
Yet the system and the workers who drive its success are sidelined and neglected as an afterthought when it comes to inclusion in our larger waste management landscape. The bottle deposit has not risen in 40 years. Today in New York City, canners earn on average $5 an hour. Redemption centers are closing every day and many types of containers are arbitrarily excluded from the system. A 10-cent deposit would increase our return rates to 90%, and an increased handling fee would allow small businesses to flourish. All these changes together would combine to save the City around $80 million annually. This is our best recycling system and the workers who drive its success, especially the canners who collect what others discard, are essential. We are not talking about reinventing the wheel. The system works and works well. It just needs your support. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Hi, Cecilia. Hi, thanks. My name is Cecilia Ellis. I am Policy and Communications Manager for the New York Public Interest Research Group, NYPIRG. Consumer protection and environmental preservation, public health, education, energy and climate, and government reforms are our areas of concern. We are testifying today in support of Res 0362-2026. My testimony summarizes the written version I submitted, written by Blair Horner, our Senior Policy Adviser.
As you know and have heard, the bottle bill has been on the books for over four decades and is the law that requires a nickel deposit on beverage containers. Water bottles and cans were originally designed as an anti-litter measure but has become the most successful recycling program in general for the entire State. Two-thirds of covered beverage containers are redeemed, and we need to expand the definition of which beverage containers are covered by the law. Many containers that did not exist in 1982 are ubiquitous today and need to be covered. So we should be expanding that bottle bill.
Included in the written testimony are some examples of bottles — like this Vitamin Water that is redeemable, but the Gatorade sports drink is not redeemable because it did not exist. We have a lot of examples of that in our written testimony. We also have a recent report analyzing the cost savings to municipalities if New York does modernize the law. As you heard from Ryan, New York City taxpayers could see a reduction in solid waste disposal and litter cleanup costs totaling anywhere from $34.9 million to as much as $80 million. Of course the City budgets far exceed the savings estimated in the report, but as you know, budgets are tightening. We have heard all day today costs are going up, landfills are reaching capacity. Any steps to curb solid waste and solid waste costs need to be embraced. It is time for a dime. Therefore NYPIRG urges the Council to support this resolution and the State to expand the State's bottle bill. Thank you so much. With that, this panel is relieved.