Roundtable: Kathryn Garcia

Q: What have you been focusing on in your first year?

KG: Identifying ways to deliver our critical services faster and more equitably and preparing the agency to take the next step in terms of sustainability. We have expanded the NYC Organics Collection pilot and are developing plans to continue to grow that program. We have given focus to quality-of-life issues, including the successful removal of all illegally placed clothing bins on public property in the city. I am particularly proud of our snow fighting despite the relentless winter weather that included one of the coldest Februaries on record and a total of 25 different weather events. Our pilot of more efficient snow routing in Staten Island and Manhattan was a great success, and we will continue to expand this service to additional parts of the city going forward.

Q: What have you been doing to improve recycling rates? Has there been improvement?

KG: I try to look at each of the different components of the waste stream and develop a program for each one. For example, food scraps, yard waste and soiled paper make up roughly one-third of the material we collect. We currently offer curbside organics collection to more than 100,000 households. This spring we are expanding organics collection service to five additional neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx to serve a total of 133,000 households with nearly 340,000 residents. We are also working to expand the re-fashioNYC and e-cycleNYC programs, which allow residents to drop off unwanted clothing and electronics for reuse and recycling at no cost to the city.

Q: Has the city’s new ban on throwing out electronics with normal trash caught on?

KG: The ban is actually the result of a law passed by the state in 2012 that took effect in January. The city carried out the ban earlier this year, but we issued warning stickers instead of tickets for the first three months.

Electronic waste, though a small portion of the overall waste stream, contains not only potentially hazardous materials like lead, mercury and cadmium, but also valuable and scarce materials like aluminum, copper and gold. With the help of our electronics recycling partners, we have created the e-cycleNYC program to collect e-waste from apartment buildings with 10 or more units. New Yorkers can also drop off unwanted electronics at more than 95 locations in all five boroughs, and we are holding twice as many SAFE Disposal events this year as in past years. At our first event at Midland Beach, Staten Islanders dropped off more than double the amount of e-waste we collected at last year’s event.

Q: How can the city ensure waste processing is distributed equitably throughout the city?

KG: Mayor Bill de Blasio has long supported a fair, sustainable five-borough plan for managing our solid waste. Last month, we opened the first of four converted marine transfer stations in College Point, Queens. Once fully operational, that MTS will accept more than 1,000 tons of waste per day that had previously been tipped at private transfer stations in Jamaica. As a result, this historically overburdened neighborhood may see the tons of waste and number of trucks cut in half. Three more MTSs are scheduled to open in the next three years, fully realizing the benefits in other overburdened communities. Full implementation of the plan will reduce the city’s annual greenhouse gas emissions by 34,000 tons and truck travel on city streets by 5.7 million miles per year.

Q: How has the pilot program for converting food scraps into natural gas gone?

KG: The pilot for food waste processing at the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant has been working well so far. We learned that the DEP’s anaerobic digesters are not great at processing leafy or woody material, including the yard waste collected curbside in the NYC Organics pilot. However, they are great at converting food waste, especially from restaurants and other commercial kitchens, into clean, renewable natural gas. The city hopes to scale up the program over time, with the goal of taking 50 tons per day of food waste by the end of this year and ramping up to 250 tons per day over the next few years.