Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press All this and more: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg presented an array of plastic objects that can now be recycled under the city’s newly expanded program at a news conference in City Hall Park Wednesday.New Yorkers, your days of expending precious brain cells trying to determine whether that yogurt cup or plastic takeout container goes in the trash or the recycling bin have come to an end.
The city announced the biggest expansion of its recycling program in 25 years on Wednesday, saying all hard plastics would be accepted. This includes shampoo bottles and clothes hangers as well as countless toys and other common household objects.
“Starting today,†Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said at a news conference in City Hall Park, “if it’s a rigid plastic -- any rigid plastic -- recycle it.â€
The city expects the move to divert 50,000 tons of waste a year from landfills â€" enough to fill a football field seven stories high, the mayor said.
The expansion coincides with the opening, scheduled to take place by year’s end, of what is described as the largest household recycling plant in North America, on the waterfront in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, operated by Sims Municipal Recycling.
When the plant is up and running, the city says, those 50,000 tons of waste a year will cost $12 a ton less to transport than moving trash out of state to landfills. It will save $600,000 a year and decrease the city’s carbon footprint.
The overall cost-benefit analysis of recycling versus throwing away waste is less clear. A 2008 study by the Natural Resources Defense Council found that overall, taking into account extra trucks, crews, fuel and other costs, recycling cost the city $17 a ton more than curbside trash disposal, but that the gap was narrowing.
The city did not immediately respond to a request to provide more current figures, but an official said that the expansion would be a money saver overall because recycling trucks already making their rounds would come closer to being used at full capacity. Whether that savings would be offset by garbage trucks being used less efficiently was not immediately clear.
(The official was also asked if the stated no-holds-barred policy on rigid plastics would even include bowling balls. He was not immediately able to supply a response.)
Mr. Bloomberg also announced that a composting program under way in some public schools would be expanded to the entire public school system over the next two years. Schools already participating in the program have cut the amount of garbage they sent to landfills by nearly 40 percent, the city said.
The city will be sending out mailers to New Yorkers describing what can now be recycled, and how. Those, too, can be recycled.
