Thursday, September 17, 2015

Textile recycling to start next month

From the Queens Courier:

The city’s Sanitation Department selected neighborhoods in Community Board 11 – which include Bayside, Douglaston and Little Neck – to participate in a pilot program for curbside clothing and textile pickup through a special one-time collection this fall.

According to Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, textiles make up about 6 percent of New York City waste. Garcia said that recycling and reusing this material will help the city reach its goal of zero waste to landfills by 2030.

“Each year, city residents throw away more than 200,000 tons of clothing and textiles,” said Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia. “This trial illustrates our continuing efforts to find innovative ways of recycling the most common materials found in our waste stream.”

This program is a partnership with the Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association, Local 831, which will use existing personnel and equipment to collect the items on the overnight shift.

The Community Board 11 collections are scheduled for the week of Oct. 19, and residents should leave textiles out on their recycling day during that week. DSNY will evaluate the viability of continuing the program after the collection.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm all for recycling as much as possible, but the current system doesn't work (especially if your collection falls on a Monday!) In Japan they sort their plastics by type... and they use centralized collection (every block or so... not a one-per borough or CB model). This seems far more efficient...

Anonymous said...

Great - now we'll not only have people going through our garbage looking for cans and bottles, but they'll be looking for clothing, too ... and leaving a mess at the curb.

LibertyBoyNYC said...

Riddle me this, where does all this material go? The fact that the city collects it (after mandating that its citizens apply the value-added labor of sorting it first) makes me think it has some value to someone.

Anonymous said...

Can the recycled textiles still have the mayor in them?