The city’s green agenda has a big black spot — a plummeting recycling rate that by the end of the month could reach its lowest level in five years, The Post has learned.
Records show that just 15.9 percent of residential waste was recycled in the first 10 months of the current fiscal year, which ends on June 30. Over the same period in 2009, the rate was 16.4 percent. In 2008, it was 16.7 percent. When construction debris and commercial waste are included, the decline is even more dramatic. The “total diversion rate” collapsed to 24.6 percent from 33.5 percent a year earlier.
The city’s Web site, however, still boasts that it has “the largest, most ambitious recycling program in the country.”
“Let’s just say that recycling is going through a bit of a rough patch and hasn’t received the attention it deserves,” said Eric Goldstein of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
He attributed the downward trend to lingering confusion over the city’s decision in 2002 to discontinue glass and plastic recycling, only to restore plastic in 2003 and glass in 2004.
“That’s when the drop-off first began” he said, suggesting the administration support 11 bills before the City Council that would add more public receptacles and include yard waste and clothing material in the recycling program.
But Robert Lange, director of the Sanitation Department’s Bureau of Waste Prevention, Reuse & Recycling, says the real reason for the recycling decline is the economic downturn that stalled construction and eliminated tons of debris from the waste stream.