Op-Ed

New York City – The City That Never Sleeps Looks Clean

If the world is our oyster, we must live in a pretty dirty ocean. On my way to school, just this morning, I witnessed a multitude of people throwing their trash on the ground, some of which might have been, or maybe more accurately, should have been, meant for a recycling bin. There is an insane lack of education regarding recyclables, what to do with our trash, and the resources we have and need to carry out a sustainable lifestyle in this city.

According to GrowNYC, New York City residents currently recycle only 17% of their total waste. 17%! And I am sure you can imagine that most of this trash ends up on city floors. It is always unfortunate when I am wearing a brand new pair of shoes and have to avoid mystery puddles of solid or liquid garbage. We need some sort of incentive system to promote actual recycling, or proper waste disposal. But what are the options?

One is to do nothing and hope that the people of New York City suddenly wake up and realize what has been happening around them, and what the consequences of leaving trash lying around are. The other option is to bring back New York City’s famous incinerators. They were first used in the the 1880s and they continued to be used until 1989 when their use was banned.

If they were considered such a great source of waste disposal, you are probably wondering why they were banned. According to the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance, incinerators are unsafe, produce more carbon dioxide than coal fired power plants, are extremely expensive, and produce a lot of pollution. Incinerators are clearly not the answer.

What about landfills? Maybe they are a viable option for trash disposal. But let us keep them local folks. You cannot hide from your trash forever. So that nice spot you were petitioning for as a new local park? That is going to be a your new local landfill instead. It will contain all of our garbage while making sure that the toxic juices we are trying to get rid of do not end up in our groundwater. You know how much New York City prides herself on that Filtration Avoidance Determination quality-grade groundwater. Best of all, landfills do not smell too terribly. As you can probably tell, local landfills may be a short-term solution to frighten us into recycling, but it is certainly not a good long-term solution.

However, there is a lack of recycling bins in our boroughs. According to the NYC website, there are only 86 recycle bins in Queens, most of which are located on Queens Boulevard, Austin Street, and Roosevelt Ave. What about the rest of the neighborhoods? If I am walking with a Snapple bottle in hand, even if I know it belongs in a recycling bin, I will most likely be forced to toss it in a trash can because that is the only thing available outside of my home. Sorry buddy, I’m not lugging this empty bottle around all day! Even if the public was educated about how to handle recyclables, they cannot carry out sustainable actions with a lack of resources in this city.

Speaking of education, Barbara Darrigo, a New York City principal of a K-8 elementary/middle school in Harlem, expresses a concern for the lack of environmental education in her school. Passing through the cafeteria during lunchtime, you can find hundreds of children tossing recyclables into big black garbage cans. “It’s not that the children don’t want to recycle, it’s that most of them don’t know how to,” she expressed. As New York City residents, we can all say that we were never taught how to recycle in elementary, middle, or high school. It is hard to implement these programs in a city where it is not ingrained in us from an early age. It is necessary to create habits and a sustainable lifestyle from the get-go, not turn people from their comfort zones and routines later in life.

New Yorkers need to do a 180 when it comes to recycling habits. You would not find people in San Francisco throwing bottles in the trash (especially when there is a recycling bin directly next to the trash can) without a second thought, the way New Yorkers do. We need to get more educated about recycling so that we do it naturally and instinctively. So, should there be incentives to recycle? Maybe instead, we just need to get educated, and then have the human decency to care about our environment, our planet, our futures, and recycle on our own.