Re: [greenyes] FW: [MassRecycle] New York City recommits to recycling!

[Helen Spiegelman <hspie@no.address>]

There's a flaw in the reasoning here.

One cannot infer that the city is going to get "amazing returns" on metal, 
glass and plastic (not to mention all the other products in which they are 
inextricably commingled) and that these materials will perform "the way 
paper did" just because they are hauled in city sanitation trucks to one 
place to be mechanically separated.

Where, I ask this GREENYES list -- you, who are supposed to be the 21st 
Century thinkers about waste! -- is the incentive for producers to design 
better products?

What Mayor Bloomberg has done, with all of you cheering him on, is let the 
producers of all those throwaway products off the hook for a good, long time.

Here in Canada, the city of Toronto is facing an even more embarrassing 
quandary than New York. Their trash is being exported across the border to 
Michigan (Kerry is even trying to make it an election issue). Toronto's 
response has been to pressure for a provincial law that will at least get a 
little chump-change to help cities cover recycling costs. And while they're 
waiting for industry to put their money on the table, the cities are 
investing their millions in COMPOSTING PLANTS for the food waste, yard 
waste and contaminated paper that is belching GHG into the atmosphere.

I'm bitterly disappointed in Bloomberg -- and in the American public for 
not helping him get a better final grade in Waste Management 101 (""The 
mayor might have given himself an F on the trash issue not long ago," Mr. 
Izeman said, "But in striking this deal, he just turned in an A paper.")

Helen.




> It will likely drop even further, perhaps to around $20 per ton, as Hugo Neu
> picks up a larger share of the more lucrative paper market, which is part of
> the terms of the contract, he said.

(snip)


"With this contract, the city does for metal, glass and plastic what it did
for paper nearly 10 years ago," said Councilman Michael E. McMahon, a Staten
Island Democrat and chairman of the Council's waste management committee.

> In 1997, the city offered a 20-year contract for 50 percent of the city's
> paper recycling, and Visy Industries, an Australian recycling company,
> stepped forward to build a $250 million processing plant on Staten Island.
>
> "That contract gave paper recycling a permanent home, it attracted the
> needed investment to build permanent infrastructure and now the city gets
> amazing returns on it," Mr. McMahon said. "This contract holds the same
> basic promise."