Steve Cohen, 3rd of April 2008
Wasted: New York City's Giant Garbage Problem
New York City’s 8 million residents and millions of businesses, construction projects and
visitors generate as much as 36,200 tons of garbage every day.
The city’s Department of Sanitation handles nearly 13,000 tons per day of waste generated by
residents, public agencies and non-profit corporations; private carting companies handle the
remainder.
During the twentieth century, the City relied on a number of landfills for garbage disposal.
Then, in December 2001, the city’s last garbage dump, Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island,
closed. In response, we adopted a 20-year plan for exporting waste.
The city’s annual bill for collecting and disposing residential trash jumped from about $658
million in 2000 and to about one and a quarter billion dollars in 2008. The cost of disposal
has grown from $300 million in 2005 to about $400 million today. While some of that is
inflation, most of it is due to the higher cost of transporting and landfilling garbage out of
state. The City’s long-term plan is to reduce costs by recycling more, reducing waste and
building a waterfront waste transfer system less dependent on trucks and able to use
containers to ship garbage by barge and train further away to cheaper dumpsites.
It is hard to imagine a more environmentally damaging waste-management system than the
one we have in New York. Actually, it’s not so hard to imagine, if you look back and remember
the time when we dumped our garbage into the ocean, or used incinerators in the basements
of apartment buildings to burn garbage at night.
Today, we collect garbage with trucks that use high-polluting diesel fuel and then dump that
garbage onto the floor of waste transfer stations that are typically located in poor
neighborhoods. We then scoop the garbage up off the floor and load it onto large trucks that
also burn high-polluting diesel fuel and ship it to landfills and waste to energy incinerators
located away from New York City.
While we own our entire water system, our waste system leaves us at the mercy of the private
marketplace and other states. The current system of waste export leaves the city vulnerable
over the long run. It is harder to site landfills in this region than it used to be. Political
opposition to landfilling is growing in many dump site communities.
Why do New Yorkers create so much garbage? Well there are a lot of us and New Yorkers are
busy people— we toss garbage causally and we don’t like to sort our garbage. We prefer not to
think about garbage or where it will end up. I think we have this fantasy that those green
plastic mounds of garbage bags on the street are magically transported to some mythical solid
waste heaven.
New York’s elected leaders know that waste is a no-win issue. As long as the cost increases of
exporting waste are gradual, it is unlikely that enough political noise will be generated to
induce a sitting mayor to rethink waste export. No Mayor in his or her right mind will try to
build a waste incinerator or landfill in or near the city.
Still, the technology of waste incineration has advanced dramatically since we stopped using
those horrible apartment incinerators in the 1960's. In Japan, 70 percent of all waste is
burned and generates electricity in the process. While incineration pollutes the air, it is less
polluting than transporting waste in diesel-fueled trucks to leaking out-of-state-landfills.
What is the solution? In 2003 I proposed barging our garbage to waste-to-energy plants
located in some of the economically distressed cities along the Hudson River. This could
provide jobs and cheaper power to towns that could really use them. While I still like that
idea, no one else did.
The next idea I’d like to propose is to develop community-based waste-management facilities.
Perhaps smaller scale waste to energy plants coupled with recycling facilities and anaerobic
digesters (a form of automated compost facility) could be located in all 59 community board
districts in the city. Of course, we would lose economy of scale in managing these small
facilities, and some neighborhoods would have trouble finding a place to put them. Still, it
may be a good time to develop the technology to make smaller, cost-effective waste facilities.
If everyone had to manage their own garbage, maybe we’d figure out a way to make less of it.
TASKS & QUESTIONS
1. Make sure you understand all the underlined words and phrases and study them for
discussions on the topic!
2. Summarize the main facts of the article in your own words!
3. In connection with NY’s garbage problem, what can you say about these key words:
a.) residents/visitors/business b.) landfills c.) city’s annual bill d.) waste management
system e.) waste export f.) New Yorkers` mentality h.) elected leaders i.) Japan
4. What aspects about saving/polluting the environment are mentioned in the text?
5. What suggestions for NY’s waste management does the author of the article offer?
6. What positive side-effects of his “garbage solutions” does the author point out?
7. What differences can you find in the garbage situation between NY and Mumbai (Slumdog
Millionair)?
8. Is collecting and disposing garbage only a problem of large cities/ outside Europe?
9. Look at the following pictures! How would you interpret them?