Public Space Recycling Pilot Program: New York City, NY
This report looks at the potential for public space recycling to increase the City’s waste diversion rate. It considers the challenges to management of a recycled program in public spaces that fall under varying jurisdictions, and comments on the extent to which choice of site might contribute to or detract from the success of such a recycling program.
The report provides a summary of design considerations, planning, publicizing, and analysis of the pilot program.
The results of this pilot program are instructive and suggestive for other communities. For example, the study found that a high degree of contamination among metal, glass and plastic recyclables (37%) suggests that efforts to do on-site materials-sorting may not justify the effort or expense. However, there was very little contamination (5%) of collected paper recyclables.
Additionally, the report offers a blueprint that can instruct the design and implementation of similar pilot projects in other cities.
