Long range planning
Our Goals
To inspire and support communities and businesses in achieving zero waste mandates (City & State) through education, advocacy, and collaboration. Our activities are in support of this zero waste goal.
Our recommendations for a zero waste plan
We consider Zero Waste to be 90% diversion from landfill and incineration within a ten year period. Zero Waste is achieved by maximizing waste prevention and diverting discards to reuse, recycling, and composting according to the zero waste hierarchy.
Zero waste initiatives can be employed for each sector of the discard stream. There are many more which we have recommended in previous plans and roadmap. Note that all the light blue boxes across the top would be employed in each sector of the discard stream.
Zer0 waste studies
To start on the road to zero waste, New York City needs to undertake three types of studies targeted to reduce the parts of the discard stream that are unnecessarily exported to incinerators and landfills:
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A product-based waste characterization based on the above pie chart. Currently, NYC designs its waste characterization studies using a pie chart that mainly has recycling (and organics) categories. This type of study has helped the NYC determine how much MRF (material recovery facility) capacity it needs, how many and what design of trucks, and processing / marketing the city needs for recyclables and organics. But the city has all the recycling infrastructure it needs to achieve 100% capture rate. More composting space is necessary to avoid the polluting co-digestion “eggs” in Brooklyn. We don’t have information on reuse potential in NYC, so the city’s waste characterization studies also need to help design a municipal reuse program and infrastructure, and how to target un-recyclable packaging types and other items that should be banned or otherwise reduced in production.
Note that each slice of the pie can be divided into subcategories (e.g. furniture under durables), and there are additional zero waste initiatives that can be added to the short lists in the teal boxes. The objectives of a successful long-range solid waste management plan (SWMP) would be to assign all discard categories to at least one zero waste initiative, in preferential order of the hierarchy of methodologies.
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A study of optimal design of educational materials and outreach campaigns to maximize program participation. At present, NYC only recycles about half of the recyclables it generates. Organics capture rates are far less, only 12%, and since there is no comprehensive reuse measurement, we don’t know how much reusable/repairable products are exported for disposal.
Model cities spend from $3 to $5 / capita / year on education and outreach, while NYC spends less than a dollar. Our diversion rate from export has been less than 20% (despite legislative mandates) compared with the model cities that divert more than double.
In order to achieve zero waste participation and capture rates must be near 100%. We are far from that and don’t have a plan to understand the NYC public’s likelihood of participating in zero waste programs. We also don’t have a plan to target those with specially designed outreach that will motivate everyone to participate. The graphic below shows some of the target groups and what they require to participate. Outreach must also target those who aren’t paying attention and motivate them to do so.
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Reuse potential studies showing repairable categories and how much is generated and its geographic distribution, in order to design a municipal reuse collection, repair, and marketing program with infrastructure to gently collect reusable products at the curbside, bring them to a PERF (product evaluation and repair facility), evaluate the condition, dispatch to the appropriate repair shop, salvage spare parts for the repair shops, and sell / donate repaired items. Argument / Design of Municipal reuse programs
Additional studies
Pilot Studies
Just as DSNY developed and rolled out pilots to test the outreach and collection infrastructure for the brand new recycling program prior to the 1993 Citywide rollout, the City should develop, study, pilot, and eventually roll out a municipal reuse system citywide. This should include: piloting gentle reuse collection, ‘processing’ in a PERF, and sale/donation.
Other pilots should test the efficacy of different types of educational messages and methods targeted at different audiences (e.g. brochures, billboards, subway, web, etc etc)
The results of pilot studies should be analyzed and tweaked and repiloted to improve efficacy. All results of all studies and pilots should be immediately available to the public online.
Zero Waste Plans
In addition to studies, the City needs to create a long-range plan that has sufficient zero waste initiatives that are achieved every year to reach the 90% diversion goal within ten years. The initiatives for each year of the plan should be evaluated to understand how they will contribute to increasing the diversion rate. This step is critical to a successful zero waste plan. If there is no diversion goal coupled with a deadline and sufficient funding and staffing, zero waste will not be a priority and will not be achieved.
Also, a successful long-range zero waste plan requires a sufficient number of strategies, initiatives, and methods in each year of the plan to maximize waste prevention, reuse, recycling and composting to achieve 90% diversion from disposal within 10 years. These initiatives can include programs, legislation, incentives, disincentives (for not participating), and infrastructure.
In NYC we have seen the flatlining of recycling and organics diversion rates over more than a decade for this reason. The graph below shows how much recyclables and organics are being exported for burning and burying at great cost. Our constantly renewing export contracts cost the City half a billion dollars per year. The money spent on zero waste programs is a fraction of that.
Therefore, a successful long-range plan for zero waste must be coupled with sufficient funding and staff, and this is an absolute requirement to achieve zero waste because failure to do so has shown no growth in recycling, reuse, and composting rates over more than ten years.
Conclusion
To achieve zero waste, there needs to be a commitment by the municipality to:
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90% diversion by 10 years via prevention, reuse, recycling and composting
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Lay out a sufficient number of robust milestones in each year of the plan, utilizing all the zero waste solutions (see teal boxes in pie chart above) progressively structured to reach the goals on time. Zero Waste Initiatives can be programs, legislation, studies and pilots, incentives for participation, and fines for not participating
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Conduct product-based characterization studies and tie the results to zero waste initiatives and milestones
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Design and roll out pilot studies to test the efficacy of educational materials, targeting, and outreach approaches as well as elements of a municipal reuse infrastructure. All studies and programs should be continuously improved to optimize performance (i.e. diversion).
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Design education and outreach programs based on pilot study results, designed and targeted to reach and motivate all segments of the population maximizing participation rate
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Establish sufficient incentives and disincentives to increase motivation to participate in zero waste programs.
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Establish a municipal reuse system with regular, gentle collection and transportation to a PERF (Product Evaluation and Repair Facility) for processing, salvage, and sale
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Establish sufficient centralized composting infrastructure, preferably in or near the City.
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Commit sufficient funding and staff to accomplish all the milestones to achieve the zero waste 90/10 goal on time.
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Prioritize Maximizing Participation rates - This has historically been underfunded, a fraction of what model cities spend and they achieve much higher diversion rates. Educational materials need to be designed and targeted to the various groups and how they respond (participate / don’t participate
JOIN THE Long range planning COMMITTEE
The Manhattan SWAB Long Range Planning Committee consists of residential leaders, zero waste professionals and community advocates. The committee meets weekly on Tuesdays from 6:15-7:45 pm ET.
Contact us to join or learn more about how you can help support NYC’s waste reduction efforts.
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