Andrew Caringi
Ena McPherson in Tranquility Farm, one of the gardens being adopted by the city.
For months volunteers at dozens of community gardens have wondered which ones might be targeted for affordable housing. Our partners at Brooklyn Deep were in the room when gardeners learned the fate of their neighborhood plots.
The $3.3 billion, 20-year plan to send Brooklyn garbage to the Seneca Meadows landfill illustrates the growing costs of burying trash.
A highly anticipated city study of commercial waste collection has been delayed, putting off any decision about a new franchise zoning system and ensuring that the fight over the industry’s future is far from over.
The city has identified 181 small city-owned sites for potential affordable-housing development. Eighteen currently have community gardens on them. Ten of those gardens are in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
The scene at the former Fresh Kills landfill, of beautiful scenery built about decades of bad trash policy, gives reason for optimism that the city will find a way to deal with the rising costs of managing waste. But it will take a change in mindset, not just policy.
New York is diverting more and more organic material like food waste from landfills to composting projects. The big challenge might not be collecting the stuff, but figuring out where to put it all.
Poor facilities have discouraged NYCHA residents from recycling for years. While some tenants took matters into their own hands and the de Blasio administration promises a better approach, one environmental group is taking steps toward a lawsuit.
Mayor de Blasio wants to spare residents the hassle of separating paper from glass, metal and plastic. The move will likely boost recycling but its impact on city finances, commercial carters and total waste levels is hard to predict.
Waste from New York’s businesses is not picked up by DSNY but by a industry of for-profit companies who, critics say, serve inefficient routes and treat their workers poorly.
Mayor de Blasio has proposed ambitious reforms to address some of the problems caused by the 6 million tons of trash New Yorkers produce each year. But the way to a better waste system will not be easy.
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