Features

NEW YORK — The nation’s recycling movement has been steadily expanding for three decades — so much that it has become almost standard practice for people to separate their paper, plastic and glass. 

But in the nation’s biggest city — and the one that produces the most garbage — New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to temporarily do away with most recycling in an effort to close a nearly $5 billion budget gap. 

It’s a notable retreat from the recycling movement and one that has been trashed by critics. Despite the opposition and the plan’s major political hurdles, Bloomberg stuck with the proposal when he released a new version of his budget last week. 

Bloomberg would suspend the recycling of glass, metal and plastic for 18 months at an estimated savings of $56.6 million. The city collects more than 320,000 tons of recyclable glass, metal and plastic annually, but Bloomberg said it does the job inefficiently. 

“The recycling program is not, with the exception of paper, saving the ecology of the world very much. And it is very expensive,” said Bloomberg, who unveiled the proposal in his initial budget in February. 

Environmental groups say they are unaware of any major American city that has scaled back its recycling program. 

“To stop recycling would be to turn the clock backward,” said Suzanne Shepard of the New York chapter of the Sierra Club. “Recycling and waste reduction are the cornerstones to reducing this city’s waste stream.” 

The plan still faces approval by the City Council, where members have expressed opposition. State law also requires curbside recycling, so a suspension could face legal challenges as well. 

City Council member Michael McMahon, head of the council committee on sanitation and solid waste, said the city has never fully committed to its decade-old recycling program. He fears that if the city suspends the program, it would disappear forever. 

“I’m very discouraged that in this tough budgetary time, they use that as an excuse to kill the program,” said McMahon, a Staten Island Democrat whose borough was home to the city’s recently closed landfill. 

The city ships its trash out of state, and the New York Public Interest Group said that increasing the volume of trash will simply invite higher per-ton disposal rates. 

But the Bloomberg administration insists the recycling program is both costly and ineffective. 

The cost of glass, metal and plastic recycling is $240 per ton, according to the mayor’s office; simple trash disposal runs about $130 per ton, accounting for the savings. The city would continue its paper recycling program, which runs about $87 a ton. 

The Department of Sanitation, which operates the program, estimates 40 percent of the city’s glass, metal and plastic waste is not suitable quality for recycling — so the material goes to a landfill anyway. 

In addition, the administration says the current program of collecting and sorting recyclables is labor-intensive in a city with unusually high labor costs. It suggests the suspension would allow the city to reconstitute the recycling program to make it more efficient. 

It’s not the first time a city in New York state has discussed halting recycling. 

On Jan. 1, 2000, the small city of Amsterdam about 30 miles northwest of Albany became the first municipality in the nation to officially drop its recycling program to help the cash-strapped city’s finances. 

State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer sued and Amsterdam officials then resumed recycling rather than face potential penalties, including massive fines. 

Spitzer has been offering expertise to New York City on the matter, but his spokesman said earlier this year that the office didn’t plan on suing the city.