Exporting Accountability: Injustice in NYC Waste Flows and the Promise of Community-Led Composting by Tim Nottage

Exporting Accountability:

Injustice in New York Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Waste Flows and the Promise of Community-Led Composting Tim Nottage, M.A. Theories of Urban Practice

Exporting Accountability: Injustice in New Yorkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Waste Flows and the Promise of Community-Led Composting Tim Nottage M.A. Theories of Urban Practice 2018 School of Design Strategies

Advisor: Evren Uzer, PhD Secondary Advisor: Ana Baptista, PhD

ABSTRACT New York City’s new initiative to divert organic waste from the solid waste stream in the name of sustainability runs the risk of replicating unsustainable and inequitable practices of waste handling. Through a system designed to export waste outside of the city, New York externalizes the costs of waste onto communities and the ecosystem, with the burden distributed disproportionately along lines of race and class. Commercial and municipal haulers bring waste to transfer stations concentrated in low-income communities and communities of color, who suffer from diesel exhaust, noise, and the injustice of being dumped on by the city at large. From here, waste is exported to towns up to 600 miles away to be landfilled and incinerated, wasting valuable resources and polluting the air, land, and water. Where and how this waste travels is shaped by a legacy of racial zoning and municipal disregard. While the city calls for a more sustainable and equitable system, it continues to make long term contracts for solid waste export with large waste management companies. Without addressing this incongruency, systems of exporting waste and collecting and processing organics run the risk of continuing to reproduce this inequity. My research seeks to honor and highlight the history of low-income communities of color fighting for environmental justice in New York, while championing present efforts at the intersection of social justice and sustainability. I examine environmental justice campaigns, federal regulations, and city policies that created the present logistical organization and prioritization, as well as the efforts in community gardens, urban farms, and other public spaces that have developed creative methods and technical training programs to collect and process organic waste into compost, which in turn supports soil and neighborhood health. The models emerging – particularly microhauling by bicycle and creating local composting initiatives that prioritize youth of color, who are historically excluded from conversations on land-use and environmentalism – promise a way forward with less fossil fuels and pollution in low-income communities, local employment in safe, skilled jobs, and the opportunity for more waste equity between neighborhoods, boroughs, and municipalities. While this model needs to work alongside municipal, state, and federal regulations to confront an economy of endless growth on a finite planet, eliminate the production of toxic materials and disposable packaging, and hold industry accountable for the waste they produce, composting organic waste locally can – at the very least – heal our poisoned urban soils and support

regional agriculture, a necessary step towards a sustainable and equitable city and society. When centering local residents in the planning, siting, and implementation of this system, a distributed infrastructure of organic waste collection and processing that builds on existing models of hyper local, community-led programs would radically change our cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s relationship to waste and reduce the injustices that externalize costs and risks of waste management onto those with lesser political power and access to resources. Waste is fundamentally an active and constant process of valuation, an assignment of worth on materials and social relations, illuminating what and who our society deems valuable or undesirable. Based on a socio-spatial analysis of existing conditions and operations, I present research on how a system of externalized costs was structured and perpetuated, and what benefits could result from a waste infrastructure that prioritizes health and equity. As New York City unveils a new plan to create commercial waste collection zones and continues to expand household organic waste collection, this research demonstrates the need and advantages of local systems nested within regional systems, one that retains real value, such as nutrients for soil, worker safety and neighborhood health, and principles of fairness, in each community, and ensures every neighborhood â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and New York City as a whole â&#x20AC;&#x201C; is accountable for its waste.

Keywords Organic Waste, Environmental Justice, Circular Economy, Mapping, New York City

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In addition to my advisors Evren Uzer and Ana Baptista, I would like to thank several faculty at The New School whom have supported and inspired me: William Morrish, Shannon Mattern, Mindy Thompson Fullilove, Jilly Traganou, Miodrag Mitrasovic, Malkit Shoshan, and Joseph Heathcott. Thank you to Renée Peperone, Sandy Nurse, Marguerite Manela, Renée Crowley, David Buckel, Corey Blant, Carl Zimring, Justin Bland, Bernardo Loureiro, Sam Smith, Meredith Danberg-Ficarelli, Matt de la Houssaye, Dior St. Hillaire, Paula Segal, Mara Kravitz, Domingo, Victor, and Sonia for sharing your time and knowledge with me. Rest in Power, David. In “soil-darity” with my fellow composters at Maple Street Community Garden. To Joe Huppert, Deb Hatch, and Derek Livingston: thank you for helping get me here. My entire TUP and DUE cohort, but especially Jessica Serrante. Thank you and congratulations, Jess. I am profoundly grateful for you. Those who fed and nourished me both intellectually, emotionally, and literally: Lena, Sasha, Leigh, Whitney, Colin, Steve, and Misha. To Scout, who had a box of worms in the bed of your pick-up when we met, thank you for your support, your knowledge, and your partnership. You are the warmest light. Thank you Nancy Nottage and Wendy Cannell-Nottage for doing the most challenging, underpaid, and necessary work in the world; this work is a continuation of your labor and your love. And to the billions of collaborators we share this planet with.

LIST OF ACRONYMS BIC: Business Integrity Commission C&D: Construction and Demolition Waste DEC : Department of Environmental Conservation (New York State Agency) DSNY : New York City Department of Sanitation, formerly referred to as DOS. (City Agency) EBUF : Enclosed Barge Unloading Facility; see MTS EPA: Environmental Protection Agency (Federal Agency) MGP: Metal, Glass, Plastics MRF : Materials Recovery Facility MSW: Municipal Solid Waste M/WBE : Minority / Women Owned Business Enterprise MTS : Marine (Waste) Transfer Station NYC: New York City NYC-EJA : New York City Environmental Justice Alliance NYCCP : New York City Compost Project NYCHA : New York City Housing Authority WE ACT : West Harlem Environmental Action, Inc. WTE, RRF : Waste-to-Energy, Resource-Recovery-Facility (Incinerator) WTS : Waste Transfer Station

List of Figures Figure 1. Top: Residential Waste Composition, 2013 NYC Curbside Waste Characterization Study, p.8. Bottom: Commercial Waste Composition, 2012 Commercial Waste Study, p. 39. 24 Figure 2. DSNY Collection Truck. Photo by Seth Granville, via Flickr. Creative Commons 2.0 25 Figure 3. Commercial Hauling Truck. Photo by Author.

Figure 4. Waste Flow from Curb to Disposal

Figure 5. Location of NYC Carters by Primary Business Address. Source: Buro-Happold Engineering, “Private Carting Study: Economic Assessment”, p.7 29 Figure 6. Revenue taken in by waste haulers headquarted outside NYC. Source: Buro-Happold Engineering, “Private Carting Study: Economic Assessment”, p.8 29 Figure 7. Waste Management Hierarchy, RCRA Operations Manual 2014. p.II-3 30 Figure 8. Final Disposition of MSW in US in Tons, 2009. RCRA Operations Manual, p.II-4 31 Figure 9. Covanta Essex RRF (Incinerator) in Newark, N.J. Photo by Jay Kaplan. 32 Figure 10. Diagram by Herbert Girardet/Rick Lawrence showing abstractly how a circular city maximizes resource conservation and reuse. From “Regenerative Cities” (2010). 37 Figure 11. Annie Leonard’s narrated video from The Story of Stuff Project describes the linear economy in a comprehensive yet easy to understand manner. Graphic from Story of Stuff Project. 38 Figure 12. NYC Waste Policy Timeline

Figure 13. DSNY 2005 Solid Waste Export Disposal Network. 2006 Solid Waste Management Plan, p.11. 44

Figure 14. Proposed Facilities and Wastesheds. 2006 Solid Waste Management Plan, p.17 45 Figure 16. 2006 SWMP Facilities Updated Plan, DSNY, 2016. Courtesy of Open House New York. 47 Figure 18. NYC Solid Waste Transfer Stations Key.

Figure19. Flushing Waste Transfer Stations and Demographics.

Figure 20. Niagara Falls WTE Plant and Demographics.

Figure 21. South Bronx Waste Transfer Stations and Demographics.

Figure 22. Atlantic Landfill and Demographics.

Figure 23. North Brooklyn Waste Transfer Stations and Demographics. 54 Figure 24. Red Hook Waste Transfer Stations and Demographics.

Figure 25. Grows North Landfill and Demographics.

Figure 26. Many soap advertisements from the late 19th century used comparisons between dirt and people of color. 58 Figure 27. Bronx HOLC map, 1938. Source: Mapping Inequality

Figure 28. Bronx HOLC map, 1938 with 2017 Solid Waste Transfer Stations. 63 Figure 29. Manhattan HOLC map, 1938 overlaid with 2017 Solid Waste Transfer Stations 64 Figure 30. Essex County, New Jersey HOLC map, 1939 showing suburban development in New Jersey, overlaid with Covanta-Essex WTE Facility. 65 Figure 31. Brooklyn HOLC map, 1938 overlaid with 2017 Solid Waste Transfer Stations 66 Figure 32. Queens HOLC map, 1938 overlaid with 2017 Solid Waste Transfer Stations 67 Figure 33. Area Description Survey competed by HOLC of Area D-5 (Hazardous) in the Bronx. 68 Figure 34. M3 (Heavy Industry) Zoning Areas in NYC. Courtesy of NYC Planning, ZoLa: New York Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Zoning & Land Use Map. 70 Figure 35. M3 (Heavy Industry) Zoning Areas in South Bronx. Courtesy of NYC

Planning, ZoLa: New York City’s Zoning & Land Use Map.

Figure 36. M3 (Heavy Industry) Zoning Areas in North Brooklyn. Courtesy of NYC Planning, ZoLa: New York City’s Zoning & Land Use Map. 72 Figure 37. Waste Produced by Borough, Data from DSNY 2012 and 2017 76 Figure 39. DSNY Curbside Organics Collection Expansion Map, Spring 2017. Buildings in Manhattan and South Bronx are by voluntary enrollment only. 83 Figure 40. Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, Brooklyn with large anaerobic digestor eggs. Photo by Stefen Turner 85 Figure 41. Compost windrow at Red Hook Community Farms.

Figure 42. Host sites and Community Gardens Affiliated with NYC Compost Project, 2012. Photo : DSNY. 89 Figure 43. Master Composter Zhenia N. chops food scraps, considered “greens”, before mixing in “browns” - leaves, straw, wood shavings - and adding to compost bins at a Brooklyn Community Garden. 90 Figure 44. NYC Compost Project: Partners , Food Waste Collection, and Processing 92 Figure 45. Welcome sign at Red Hook Community Farm.

Figure 46. Tumblers keep rats and other pests out of fresh food scraps until they decompose enough to be added to windrows. 95 Figure 47. Top Left and Bottom: A solar/wind powered ASP system (Aerated Static Pile) pumps air into windrows, accelerating aerobic decomposition; these piles need to be turned more often, as the center decomposes more quickly. Top Right: Aerobic microbes generate heat as they decompose food scraps, heating the pile enough to kill pathogens and seeds. 96 Figure 48. A windrow at Red Hook Community Farms. The dark outline on the concrete is the former footprint; by shifting them regularly, it discourages rodents and keeps the pile aerated. Keeping the windrow in open space also discourages rodents; the late David Buckel, former Senior Organics Recovery Coordinator for Red Hook Community Farms and a fierce advocate for local, fossil-fuel free organic waste processing, was an expert in rodent control for urban composting. 97 Figure 49. During winter at Added Value Farms, the fields lie fallow, but the compost operation never stops. 100

Figure 50. Left: These windrows cure while Victor, Sonia, and Marcus turn the newest windrow behind them. Right: Solar panels charge a battery that powers this sifting machine; as compost is shoveled into the barrel (far side) as it spins, sifted compost falls in bins underneath while large chunks drop into the wheelbarrow. 102 Figure 51. BK ROTS current processing sites and geographic distribution of commercial pickups. Map courtesy BK ROT. 104 Figure 52. Top: At East Side Outside, food scraps ferment via the Bokashi method for two weeks before being added to bins. Middle and Bottom Left: Reclaimed Organic’s Bicycle Trailer is used for Microhauling in Lower Manhattan. Bottom Right: After sitting in Bokashi tubs, food scraps break down in ASP Compost Bins for another 5-7 weeks. 107 Figure 53. Victor, Compost Operations Expert and BK ROT’s first employee. Photo courtesy BK ROT. 109 Figure 54. Reclaimed Organics pick-up range for bicycle micro-hauling. 116 Figure 55. Circular Economy Hierarchy of Flows. J. Korhonen et al. / Ecological Economics 143 (2018) 37–46 119 Figure 56. DSNY’s Hamilton Avenue Marine Transfer Station where waste is containerized and exported via barge. Circular Economies require the workers, energy and infrastructure to facilitate the flow of goods. 120 Figure 57. Circular Economy Diagram. Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

121

Figure 58-61. (4 pages) Organic Material Flows, looking at present and emerging models and what locations and externalities might arise. 122 Figure 62. Greenhouse at East Side Outside Community Garden.

127

Figure 63. Map of Proposed Long-Term Export Contracts FY2019 by Author. Data from “Report of the Finance Division on the Fiscal 2019 Preliminary Budget and the Fiscal 2018 Preliminary Mayor’s Management Report for the Department of Sanitation” 131 Figure 64. Resilience Concepts Map for Northern Mahattan Climate Alliance by WE ACT for Environmental Justice. 132

TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Chapter 1. Defining Material and Social Values What is Waste? â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Materiality and Responsibility Composition and Flow Methods of Disposal Chapter 2. We Are Disposable Unsustainable Economies Waste (in)Equity in New York City Policy Filthy People â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Race and Class Divisions and Conceptions of Waste Hierarchy of Land Value: Racial Zoning and Waste Infrastructure Chapter 3. Organic Waste in New York City From Cholera to Community Gardens Community Composting in New York City Lower East Side Ecology Center Red Hook Community Farms and Added Value Microhaulers Chapter 4. A Just Regional Waste System As Local As Possible - Insights and Speculations Compost, Zero-Waste, and the Circular Economy Conclusion Bibliography

Exporting Accountability

INTRODUCTION New York City manages solid waste in a way that externalizes the true costs of waste onto low-income communities and people of color (POC), reinforcing geographies of inequality. Recent Zero Waste goals include efforts to divert and process food waste, yet the present practice of waste management is both unsustainable and deeply inequitable. Through a system designed to export, New York City externalizes the costs of waste onto communities and the ecosystem, with the burden distributed disproportionately on lines of race and class. Without addressing this, systems of diverting and exporting organic waste run the risk of continuing to reproduce this inequality. This thesis asks whether there is potential for a more just and sustainable waste system through methods of managing organic wastes. Based on a socio-spatial analysis of existing conditions and operations, I will present research on what benefits a distributed and democratic infrastructure of waste processing holds, both in quantitative terms such as reducing pollution and financial costs and the qualitative, cascading benefits of increased social equity and a meaningful ecological citizenship. There is potential for a system of local organic waste processing that builds on existing models of community-led programs, one that would radically change our city’s relationship to waste. My research seeks to honor the legacy of low-income communities of color fighting for environmental justice in New York City and champion present efforts at the intersection of social justice and environmental sustainability. The Principles of Environmental Justice, drafted in 1991, are a powerful affirmation from people of color that assert the fundamental rights of the Earth and of all people. These principles make explicit the responsibilities of governments to people: maintaining an ethic of responsible land use, detoxifying products and manufacturing practices, and offering people the right to participate in urban and rural planning, policy, and decision making.1 Throughout New York City’s history, the inequality with which decision making, planning, and implementation of waste management practices have conflicted with these codes. This connects to the long history of struggle for land, labor, and racial justice in the United States in relation to waste. From the Young Lords protesting Sanitation’s infrequent garbage collection in the streets of East Harlem, to the 1968 sanitation worker’s strike in Memphis that famously held signs declaring “I AM A MAN”, the history of environmental justice struggles is intertwined with our nations actions that systematically keeps resources from people of color; inequity is the dehumanizing and devaluing concept that America’s founders wrote into the Constitution by ruling that

Introduction

African slaves counted as 3/5ths of a person. Environmental injustice is tied to the land; indigenous people were repeatedly killed or removed from their land to make way for white American interests, the same land that white plantation owners forced African slaves to work, stripping the soil of nutrients for cash crops. This thesis honors that long and continuing legacy, and the connections between waste, race, ecological health, and colonialism – a colonialism that created the parameters for an economy rooted in extraction of wealth from the Earth and people’s bodies. I hope this thesis can offer tools and lessons to confront this legacy. Research for this thesis involved the analysis of publicly available reports and data from city government and the Department of Sanitation (DSNY), such as PlaNYC, OneNYC, the Solid Waste Management Plan, and Budget Reports, as well as interviews with Sanitation officials, waste scholars, and compost professionals working at operations of multiple scales; I am most indebted to those I spoke with and turned compost with at the NYC Compost Project and BK ROT. A literature review of nonprofits and environmental justice organizations focused on waste, such as the Transform Don’t Trash coalition, the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance, the Global Alliance for Incineration Alternatives, and Global Green USA was supplemented by the rich work of waste professionals and environmental racism scholars such as Julie Sze, Samantha MacBride, Carl Zimring, Robin Nagle, Martin Melosi, and Ana Baptista. Additionally, the work of program alumni Bernardo Loureiro and Silvia Xavier – who examined transfer station concentrations and canners who collect recyclables from the streets of New York City, respectively – inspired me and set a precedent for mapping waste flows and centering waste workers in this thesis; I am indebted to their research and encouragement. Census data on race and economic status, zoning maps, and redlining maps were analyzed along with data on the location and operations of waste infrastructure throughout New York City and the states that receive New York’s solid waste. Field research included New York City Compost Project host sites and processing facilities, municipal waste transfer stations, community gardens, material recovery facilities that sort recyclables, and talks and conferences focusing on organic waste. Naturally, this research also involved grabbing a shovel and turning windrows, chopping food scraps, and sifting finished compost. In my first chapter, I will define the scope of my analysis: what materials and flows I examine, the material composition and volume of solid waste in NYC, who disposes of this waste, how most is disposed of in landfills or combusted, and the fundamental assumptions and systems that guide these methods, placing responsibility on individuals and municipalities for material discards rather than the industries that produce goods. In my second chapter, I focus on what land use and labor policies have shaped the current incarnation of the system, how these practices externalize the costs of our waste on those deemed less valuable through facility siting and selective

Exporting Accountability

enforcement of equity principles that encourage environmental racism, and why this arrangement is both unsustainable and unjust. I analyze geographies of race and wealth in relation to waste infrastructure, and how place-based organizing has resisted and triumphed over top-down decision making that racially and economically segregates the burdens of municipal waste management. In my third chapter, I examine the changing nature of organic waste management in New York City, and what new and old practices are being utilized to shape the system with a particular focus on local composting initiatives. Through interviews and site visits, I examine the ways in which local composting reduces the distance and fossil fuels used by exporting organic waste to be processed outside of the city, and how it reduces the amount of total municipal solid waste being exported through and to low income communities of color. I discuss the ownership and labor structures of these initiatives, their funding models, and their connection to the people and places they exist in. My final chapter synthesizes the first three chapters, examining the challenges and potential opportunities of using organic waste processing to have an impact on reducing the burdens and externalizations of cost on low-income communities of color, and through a visualization of how distributed local organics processing could function in the context of new commercial waste zones, and with concepts of a circular economy. I consider how organic waste, soil, and food production are an example of a truly circular economy, yet still requires much human labor and establishing equitable practices. A truly just society cannot prioritize the value of some people over the value of others. Waste is an assignment of value, a judgment based on the utility, importance, and demand for materials, people, and space. A wasteland is a landscape without potential for cultivation or habitation; a waste of time is an activity deemed undesirable. To say that an object is waste is incomplete; although we commonly describe waste as if it were a noun, it is more truthful to use waste in its verb form, for describing a thing as waste is itself an action of wasting, creating a personal judgment of a material or personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s relative value. To examine material waste and the process of wasting that we engage in is to examine our relationships with one another and with our environment, positioning ourselves as a culture and species at scales from the individual to the regional, national, and global. Waste is a popular and growing area of study among urban professionals in New York, and I owe much gratitude to both the rich discourse that reverberates through our contemporary zeitgeist and the transparency of public institutions and agencies at the city and state level. The grounding theoretical analysis with which I approach this work is the concept of environmental justice, as defined by the Principles of Environmental Justice, a document which emphasizes the ability for communities of color and lowincome communities to speak for themselves. My own research and analysis seeks

Introduction

to honor and amplify these voices. This research is limited to the present context of New York City at a particular moment and is decidedly not a definitive summary of all environmental justice struggles involving waste in New York City. Limitations in time and access to organizations and the data available make tracking waste difficult; in New York State, the only data on tonnage and destination of waste flows is self-reported by private waste transfer stations, and all states have different reporting requirements and levels of transparency; for instance, the amount of waste brought to a transfer station in the Brooklyn and then sent by barge to the Waste-To-Energy incinerator in Newark, New Jersey can be found on the annual reports the transfer station sends New York State, but the tonnage of waste driven directly there by DSNY collection trucks, or where those trucks collect waste from, is not available to the public. As Samantha MacBride notes in her rigorous analysis of recycling in America, achieving a level of data sufficient to create a national system of sustainable materials management requires much stricter reporting and regulating mechanisms for industry.

Endnotes 1. Delegates to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Principles of Environmental Justice,â&#x20AC;? October 27, 1991. 2. Samantha MacBride, Recycling Reconsidered: The Present Failure and Future Promise of Environmental Action in the United States, Urban and Industrial Environments (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2012).

Exporting Accountability

Defining Material and Social Values

CHAPTER 1 - DEFINING MATERIAL AND SOCIAL VALUES To understand the way our waste system externalizes cost through hierarchies of value on people and land, we must first understand what is considered waste, who is responsible for it, where it travels, and what is ultimately done with it. In this chapter I will examine how we define waste and who is held responsible for it, and how waste is handled in New York City. I will explain the difference between public and private services, how we arrived at our present system of waste management, and who ultimately profits from it. By defining solid waste as a municipal issue, industry escapes accountability for the products they produce. By combining or separating waste in accordance to its materiality, the value of waste can be wasted or effectively recovered, respectively. I look at the ownership of waste hauling companies in New York City and the accompanying inefficiencies and imbalances. I will also discuss popular methods of municipal waste management: how materials in our economy come to their final disposition in landfill, combustion, or are recycled â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and why incineration and landfill are inelegant and irresponsible methods of disposal.

Exporting Accountability

What is Waste? – Materiality and Responsibility Waste is a fluid, protean word with many meanings. Ultimately, what I aim to discuss is solid waste, that is the assortment of materials we commonly define as ‘garbage’ and discards. The concept of waste is truly an expression of value, and as such there are many connections to the values our society places on social status and cultural constructs. Wasting is a process by which the desirability of a thing decreases, which is of course dependent on the perspective, needs, and desires of an individual or society. I use the term waste to refer to solid waste that is collected by city and private services rather than garbage, trash, or discards, because not only are our methods of discarding these materials deeply wasteful, but to emphasize the connection of how we value certain people and ecologies over others. The responsibility for wasted materials is based on modern notions of private property; the owner of the material in question is seen as the ‘waste generator’ when that material is wasted or disposed of. This becomes more complex in a community or city, when disposing of waste can have an impact on other members of the community. From this perspective, arguments about who are the ultimate producers of waste can become quite complex. If the waste is a product made by a business, and that product is purchased by an individual, who is responsible for disposing of the product after its use ends? If the responsibility of waste materials is placed on the individual, and the quintessential notion of the individual in the United States is the property owner, then waste is an issue of locality. With the Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965, U.S. Congress defined solid waste as the local responsibility of municipalities. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) of 1976 created further stipulations on what types of materials were defined as municipal solid waste (MSW). Before these designations, technologies and municipal services for waste in New York City were established to negotiate the complexity, inefficiency, and danger to civic life and health that came from dense concentrations of waste left to individual responsibility and market forces; Federal regulations sought to curb the methods of disposal that were deemed dangerous and unsanitary, but these regulations do not protect all equally. Waste categories and disposal methods impact most those who handle waste and those who suffer the externalized costs of disposal systems. The division of who handles waste – individuals, municipalities, or private companies – has real effects on where waste material goes and how it impacts land and people. Although industry is responsibility for the waste of manufacturing, the product, once sold to a customer, becomes the customer’s liability, regardless of the ability of an individual to effectively recycle or dispose of a material. Therefore, within a product’s lifecycle, it is the consumer that assumes responsibility for its disposal,

Defining Material and Social Values

with only a few examples of the producers of products being held responsible by state law (mostly glass bottles and aluminum cans) for the discarded product and its effects. Many traditional materials are not difficult or hazardous to recycle or dispose of, while many modern industrial products include a wide swath of toxic chemicals and heavy metals. Disassembling and disposing of a laptop computer, aluminum, or a poly-vinyl chloride (PVC) shower curtain is either impossible or poisonous for the everyday urban denizen. Proponents of extended producer responsibility claim that manufacturers should ultimately be responsible for managing the materials left when their products become waste, especially those who produce disposable packaging such as beverage containers, or products that are often hazardous to dispose of such as electronic waste. Nevertheless, extended producer responsibility is uncommon in the United States due to fierce resistance from industry, and the responsibility for managing waste is placed almost exclusively on municipal governments and individuals.1

Composition and Flow Municipal solid waste (MSW) in New York City is a mixture of materials with very different properties. Commonly referred to as “garbage”, the EPA defines MSW as “durable goods (e.g., appliances, tires, batteries), nondurable goods (e.g., newspapers, books, magazines), containers and packaging, food wastes, yard trimmings, and miscellaneous organic wastes from residential, commercial, and industrial nonprocess sources.”2 As such, the way distinct materials are managed as waste is important to maximizing the value and minimizing the harmful costs and burdens. Putrescible Waste is any waste that contains components that decompose and produce odors, such as food wastes. Garbage collection as part of the Sanitation movement emerged to address the odor and diseases associated with this rotting waste. By contrast, inert wastes are wastes that are relatively stable and do not produce malodorous fumes, such as soil, fill, and modern materials like plastic, glass, and metal. Responsibility for MSW collection in New York City is divided among three categories based on who is seen as the generator of that waste: construction and demolition debris (C&D), commercial waste, and residential waste, which includes institutional waste. Construction and demolition waste is the category with the largest tonnage, at an estimated 6 million tons per year, and includes building materials and soil fill.3 Handled entirely by commercial carting, the materials are mostly inert and nonhazardous, but contribute large volumes of waste and thus can incur heavy costs to haul away. Commercial waste is MSW that is produced by businesses, who are

Exporting Accountability

required to either haul waste themselves or contract with private carters to collect waste and bring it to transfer stations. Commercial waste contains similar components to residential waste: putrescible organic waste from food, yard trimmings, and soiled paper, recyclables such as cardboard, paper, metals, plastics, and glass, and other miscellaneous disposable materials such as packaging. Residential and institutional waste collected by DSNY in 2016 amounted to over 3,196,200 tons,4 and commercial waste was estimated at around 3.5 million tons5. This commercial waste estimate is based on numerous studies sampling waste haulers, businesses across New York City, and the self-reporting of licensed transfer stations; some estimates place the amount of commercial waste even higher.

Figure 1. Top: Residential Waste Composition, 2013 NYC Curbside Waste Characterization Study, p.8. Bottom: Commercial Waste Composition, 2012 Commercial Waste Study, p. 39.

Defining Material and Social Values

Figure 2. DSNY Collection Truck. Photo by Seth Granville, via Flickr. Creative Commons 2.0

Since the late 1800s, the Department of Sanitation has collected waste from residential households and public institutions such as city offices and public schools. DSNY uses trucks to collect waste from the street, where residents are required to set out garbage in bags, and contracts with a mix of private and public transfer stations to remove it from New Yorkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s boundaries. Businesses in New York are required to hire a private waste collection company â&#x20AC;&#x201C; known as carters, after the horse drawn cart that collected waste from the streets of the 18th and 19th century â&#x20AC;&#x201C; to haul away their waste. This commercial waste is handled by over 200 private carting companies in NYC, which bring their waste to transfer stations in a handful of locations throughout the city, where solid waste is then sent to incineration or landfill outside city limits, and recyclables are sorted and sent to processing facilities both local and international. In this flow, waste haulers charge businesses to collect their waste, after which the haulers pay transfer stations and landfills for the waste they deliver per ton, known as tipping fees.

Figure 3. Commercial Hauling Truck. Photo by Author.

Exporting Accountability

The typical flow of municipal waste involves collection from the curb by truck, then bringing waste to a waste transfer station, where waste is consolidated in longhaul trucks, barges, and rail cars (sometimes using multiple modes through the journey) and brought to disposal sites, such as landfills and incinerators.

Figure 4. Waste Flow from Curb to Disposal

Municipal recycling works in a similar way, although recycling transfer stations and Material Recovery Facilities6 (MRF) will charge haulers tipping fees, and then sort and sell this product as industrial feedstock. Because of this double-dipping, the scrap industry can be profitable for those willing to do the dirty work, depending on market material values. By treating waste as a commodity in a globalized free market, the spatial destination and percentage of potentially recyclable materials actually recycled becomes deeply volatile, and dependent on fluctuations in prices, demand, and international policies; for instance, in January of 2018 Chinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ban on imported waste and recyclables backlogged collection centers around the globe, and

Defining Material and Social Values

it is very possible that much of that material will be landfilled if alternative markets are not found.7 This commodity-driven system has very real impacts on where material discards are brought and whether they are ultimately reused or landfilled. Municipal recycling in NYC contracts with large scrap industries to sell recyclables on commodity markets; the profits are not distributed evenly among urban residents, even though in New York, DSNY collects recyclables from households. Recycling of paper and metals has been mandatory for NYC residents since 1992; in most of the 20th century, waste was combined into solid waste or “garbage”, yet prior to this, these valuable commodities were all collected by private carters and scrap haulers.

Public and Private Responsibility for cleaning, collection, and disposal of NYC’s waste has shifted back and forth between public and private organizations since the 17th century.8 Under colonial rule, canals and ditches were dug for waste. In the 18th and 19th centuries, a messy and inefficient system of both city organizations and private haulers carted waste from homes and businesses. As the city’s population grew rapidly, a combination of political corruption, filthy streets, and deadly epidemics made New York City garbage a lightning rod of moral controversy. With the establishment of the Department of Street Cleaning, which eventually became the Department of Sanitation, sanitary engineering as a professional field gained popularity and authority in the late 19th century. By the 20th century, solid waste and the health hazards associated with it were a job for specialized public servants.9 The debate over whether to use private or public entities for curbside collection services is old, and not an easy answer. Municipal services should, in theory, serve the public equally and fairly, whereas commercial waste corporations are not required to be transparent, and are responsible first and foremost to stakeholder profit. However, the benefits and burdens of our municipal system are not distributed equally to all people; in the 1880s, political corruption in local politics severely impacted waste collection and street cleaning services, and 80 years later, irregular pickup of garbage in East Harlem persuaded the Puerto Rican activist organization the Young Lords to protest by setting trash on fire in the street. Businesses argue that competition increases and emphasizes efficiency, yet trade organizations and waste industry lobbyers can pressure policymakers to make deals that benefit them, and businesses are not free from corruption. Until the establishment of the Trade Waste Commission in 1996 – now known as the Business Integrity Commission (BIC) – commercial waste in 20th century

Exporting Accountability

New York was dominated by businesses with ties to organized crime. Price gouging, bid rigging, threats, extortion, and violence maintained this status quo for decades. The BIC was created for the purpose of breaking up these cartels and creating a fair, competitive market, with contracts limited to two years or less. Unfortunately, this increased competition has led to a system full of redundancy and concentrated pollution, where many carting companies often serve the same block and each hauler serving businesses all over the city, increasing diesel truck traffic and the particulate pollution it generates.10 These inefficiencies put pressure on haulers, who pass that pressure down to employees who work long hours in outdoor conditions operating dangerous machinery, forced to speed through the city on impossible routes.11 This situation has prompted a study of a potential commercial waste zoning system that would award contracts to carters in specific geographic zones throughout the city. DSNY hired Arcadis NY, a division of the Dutch multinational engineering firm, to complete the study, which should come out with proposals this year. Despite a chaotic system with many haulers competing for business along the same streets, large multinational waste companies dominate the commercial waste landscape in New York City. At the time of the DSNY’s Commercial Solid Waste Study in 2012, there were over 230 private hauling companies licensed by the BIC. Of these, the 50 largest carters (by number of customers) served more than 90 percent of businesses, with the 10 largest carters serving almost 48% of businesses.12 Private waste companies in New York have, since the 1980s, been concentrated in larger and larger companies through mergers and acquisitions. For instance, in 1998, USA Waste and Waste Management merged to become the largest waste company in the world, worth approximately $13.5 billion. Around this time, Allied Waste acquired Browning Ferris to become the second largest. When you consider that Waste Management has faced over 600 government pollution citations and paid 28 million in fines and settlements for bid rigging, price fixing, and price gouging between 1980 and 1992, it is reasonable to question the ethics and practices of waste management companies that handle a large amount of New York City’s waste.13 Large waste management companies profit from municipal waste as well; the Department of Sanitation’s export contracts pay these companies to manage the transport of municipal waste through the same facilities and networks of disposal that commercial waste haulers utilize. A study of the commercial waste industry performed by engineering firm BuroHappold in 2016 identified 90 commercial carters registered with the BIC with available operating data in NYC. Of these, 68% of them are headquartered within the city; the remaining 32% are based outside, mostly in New Jersey and Long Island. However, those carters based outside of the city take in $248 Million, or 49% of total revenues, and the five largest carters serve almost half of the city’s customers and

Defining Material and Social Values

Figure 5. Location of NYC Carters by Primary Business Address. Source: Buro-Happold Engineering, “Private Carting Study: Economic Assessment”, p.7

collect over half (55%) of revenues.14 As waste is exported out of the city, so is a majority of the profit from that waste. In my final chapter, I will provide some insights into how this profit extracted from residents’ discards could remain in communities; currently, this material – and any value for potential reuse – is wasted, either burned or buried.

Figure 6. Revenue taken in by waste haulers headquarted outside NYC. Source: Buro-Happold Engineering, “Private Carting Study: Economic Assessment”, p.8

Exporting Accountability

Figure 7. Waste Management Hierarchy, RCRA Operations Manual 2014. p.II-3

Methods of Disposal Disposal of municipal solid waste is regulated by the EPA under the RCRA. The waste management hierarchy (above) under the RCRA recommends the first step to reducing the amount of total waste produced; this section includes product bans on excess packaging, systems that recover waste before it leaves production, or designing products that have reusable or replaceable components, or are designed to last for a long time. While New York City has launched several programs targeting reuse, the power rests with designers and manufacturers who may be motivated by profit to design disposable products and externalize the cost of cheap materials onto consumers and the municipalities they live in. The second recommended step is to recycle (for inert materials) or compost (for organic, putrescible materials) which recovers the most value from the material. The suggested last resort for materials is disposal, most commonly through landfill or combustion. Landfilling collects, piles and buries waste, and incineration or combustion burns waste in a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;controlledâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; environment and then buries the residual ash. From the Earth all things are made, and to the Earth (or air) are things returned, but any value the wasted material may have had, such as use for future manufacturing or growing food, is lost. Disposal is also unsustainable in that it is complicit in supporting unsustainable manufacturing; many of the materials or resources sent to landfill are not renewable, such as plastics and other materials made from petrochemicals,

Defining Material and Social Values

and their extraction and manufacturing – such as concrete, asphalt, and metals – requires large amounts of energy, creates toxic waste, destroys ecosystems, and adds greenhouse gases that are destabilizing the global climate. Unfortunately, landfill and incineration – the last resort option – are the final destination for two-thirds of our municipal solid waste; 54.3% of MSW in the US was landfilled in 2009, and 11.9% was combusted.15

Figure 8. Final Disposition of MSW in US in Tons, 2009. RCRA Operations Manual, p.II-4

In 19th century New York, garbage was dumped by scow into the ocean, incinerated with massive furnaces known as “destructors”, or compressed through reduction, compacting the liquid from putrescible garbage to produce grease and soap. New Jersey complained for decades that New York City garbage such as rotting vegetables or animal carcasses would wash up on Jersey beaches or strike swimmers in the shallows, and eventually ocean dumping of garbage was made illegal; however, New York continued to dump garbage into the ocean at a site 12 miles from shore until 1934, after a successful lawsuit by New Jersey was enforced by the federal government.16 Reduction fell out of favor with the influx of synthetic materials in the 1920s and 1930s, and landfilling and incineration became the two main strategies for managing a growing amount of discards. The first incinerator in New York City was built in 1885 on Governor’s Island, and incineration as a city strategy peaked in the 1960s with 22 municipal incinerators. Additionally, many apartment buildings and institutions operated their own incinerators. Gradually, the health effects of smog and smoke that filled industrial American cities – a sign of progress - in the 20th century became one of the factors enticing wealthier Americans to flee to the newly developed – and “whites only” suburbs. The last incinerator in New York City boundaries, the Bronx-Lebanon Medical Incinerator in the South Bronx, was shut down in 1999 by a decade of activism and protest from the community.17

Exporting Accountability

Modern incinerators use an indoor inferno to burn solid waste, with ash and energy as the byproducts. Many modern incinerators are also called Waste To Energy (WTE) facilities, Resource Recovery Facilities (RRF), or Resource Recovery Plants (RRP), which is ultimately misleading; burning technical materials that could be used for manufacturing or organic materials that could return their nutrients to the soil is clumsy, inefficient, unsustainable, and wasteful, doing little to recover the resources they consume and generating relatively low amounts of energy. Claiming to replace fossil fuel energy plants, much of the refuse WTE facilities burn are produced with fossil fuels, and burning them only increases demand for new products, encouraging further extraction of fossil fuels. Incineration today, despite the rebranding and the addition of required filters, still takes place in low-income communities and communities of color, and remains what it has always been; an inefficient and costly way to dispose of waste, marketed as a cheap way for large municipalities to quickly reduce the volume of solid waste they must manage. The upkeep expenses to municipalities are actually four times as expensive as maintaining a nuclear power plant and ten times as expensive as a coal power plant. In every case, the energy saved by recycling materials is far greater than the energy generated through the incineration of those materials. The externalized costs of incineration are even greater when you consider the terrible effects of small particulate pollution, dioxins, heavy metals, and other

Figure 9. Covanta Essex RRF (Incinerator) in Newark, N.J. Photo by Jay Kaplan.

Defining Material and Social Values

toxins that industrial materials and chemicals burned through incineration release into the air, and into the soil and water when the toxic ash is landfilled. Pollution from incineration is linked to neurological diseases, asthma, and cancer. Incinerating recyclable materials necessitates the economic and ecological costs of extracting new resources and manufacturing and distributing those products. Furthermore, incineration lowers recycling rates and offers far fewer employment opportunities than recycling.18 As described in following chapters, community opposition to incineration pushed facilities outside of New York City, yet the Department of Sanitation still sends waste to incinerators outside the city in Peekskill, NY, Bridgeport, CT, and Newark, NJ. In 2012, DSNY renewed a 20 year contract with Covanta-Essex WTE facility just across the Hudson in a low-income community full of immigrants and people of color known as the Ironbound neighborhood.19 The Zero Waste initiative, Zero x 2030, widely celebrated as a forward thinking plan for a sustainable New York City as part of de Blasioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s OneNYC, plans to send Zero Waste to Landfill by 2030, and through this language, allows for the continued incineration of waste instead of recovering the maximum value of materials. Modern sanitary landfills bury many kinds of materials together, and the potential nutrients from organic matter and value of durable materials like glass, metal, and paper are, in every essence of the word, wasted. Recycling rates for paper and commingled recyclables like metal, glass and plastic (MGP) are well below what is possible. A system of free disposal and cheap goods does not offer enough of an incentive for most New Yorkers to try and recover the value from disposed items; however, many immigrants known as â&#x20AC;&#x153;cannersâ&#x20AC;? do try and collect materials that have redemption value through state producer responsibility laws. Recovering these materials is laborious and at times dangerous work, but the people who do so provide a valuable service and are proud to be finding treasure in what wealthier New Yorkers deem trash.20 Landfill also generates methane, a potent greenhouse gas, through the decomposition of organic material in oxygen-deprived conditions, known as anaerobic decomposition. While the decomposition of any organic material creates greenhouse gases, there are significantly better ways to manage the decomposition of food waste and other organics. I will discuss this further in the section on composting.

Exporting Accountability

Insights By placing the burden for materials at the end of the life-cycle on individuals and municipalities, cities assume responsible for managing the seemingly unending flow of material that is ‘generated’ by their denizens. Highly profitable for waste industries, these discards are sent outside of the city to be buried or burned. This method of managing materials not only wastes much of the value within discards, it threatens our global well-being through exacerbating climate change, and places the burden of the system on some while protecting others. In this next chapter, I will look at how our waste system treats people, in addition to materials, as disposable, and who among us is systematically devalued and wasted.

Endnotes 1 Samantha MacBride, Recycling Reconsidered: The Present Failure and Future Promise of Environmental Action in the United States, Urban and Industrial Environments (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2012). 2 US EPA Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery, “RCRA Orientation Manual 2014,” 2014, https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-07/documents/ rom.pdf. 3 Unless noted, tonnage refers to the US ton, or short ton, equivalent to 2,000 pounds. 4 DSNY, “New York City Municipal Refuse and Recycling Statistics: Fiscal Year 2017,” accessed February 5, 2018, http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dsny/docs/about_ dsny-non-dsny-collections-FY2017.pdf. 5 DSNY, “New York City Commercial Solid Waste Study and Analysis, 2012 : Summary Report,” 2012, 39. 6 Material Recovery Facilities use automated sorting technology such as optical scanners, magnets, grinders, and air jets to separate different types of recylable commodity materials. 7 Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura, “Plastics Pile Up as China Refuses to Take the West’s Recycling,” New York Times, January 11, 2018. 8 Julie Sze, Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice (Cambridge, Massachussetts.: MIT Press, 2007), 112–16. 9 Martin V. Melosi, Garbage in the Cities: Refuse Reform and the Environment (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014). 10 Priya Mulgaonkar and Jessica Quiason, “Clearing The Air: How Reforming

Defining Material and Social Values

the Commercial Waste Sector Can Address Air Quality Issues in Environmental Justice Communities” (Transform Don’t Trash NYC coalition, 2016). 11 Kiera Feldman, “Trashed: Inside the Deadly World of Private Garbage Collection,” ProPublica, January 4, 2018, The Investigative Fund edition, https:// www.propublica.org/article/trashed-inside-the-deadly-world-of-private-garbagecollection. 12 DSNY, “New York City Commercial Solid Waste Study and Analysis, 2012 : Summary Report,” 20. 13 Julie Sze, Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice, 2005. 14 BuroHappold Engineering, “Private Carting Study : Economic Assessment,” 2016, 7–10, http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dsny/downloads/pdf/studies-and-reports/ Private_Carting_Study-Market_and_Cost_Analysis.pdf. 15 US EPA Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery, “RCRA Orientation Manual 2014.” 16 EPA Region 2, “Supplement to the Environmental Impact Statement on the New York Dredged Material Disposal Site Designation for the Designation of the Historic Area Remediation Site in the New York Bight Apex,” May 1997; New Jersey v. City of New York 289 US 712, 53 S. Ct. 718, 77 L. Ed. 1466 (Supreme Court 1931). 17 Julie Sze, Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice, 74. 18 GAIA, “Facts About ‘Waste-To-Energy’ Incinerators,” January 2018. 19 NJ Department of Environmental Protection, “Christie Administration Announces Completion of Major Project to Improve Emissions from Newark WasteTo-Energy Plant,” Press Release (Trenton: NJ DEP, December 22, 2016), http://www. nj.gov/dep/newsrel/2016/16_0126.htm. 20 Silvia Resende Xavier, “Reimagining Informality and Participation in New York City’s Waste System” (Parsons the New School for Design, 2016).

Exporting Accountability

CHAPTER 2 - WE ARE DISPOSABLE

In cities, materials flow in and out in complex ways, and each city has developed ways to manage the flow of materials and goods. The decomposition of human, animal, and food waste coupled with rudimentary systems of procuring water in the dense urban environment created dangerous conditions that bred devastating diseases in the first two centuries of New York City’s growth. Sanitary engineering initially emerged in response to this public health threat, and municipal waste management functioned to remove putrefying waste as quickly as possible from the urban environment. Modern garbage collection continues to function in a similar manner, collecting and disposing of waste outside the city. By developing systems both convenient and efficient in bringing material out of sight and mind, unwanted materials both putrescible and inert are collected and sent away. Yet where is the away? Unwanted material in New York City – as throughout the United States – is exported to those without political power and inhabiting low value lands, where it is landfilled or combusted. New York City MSW is brought to transfer stations operated by private waste companies, where those companies transport waste to landfills in other states, including Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, upstate New York, Kentucky, South Carolina, New Jersey, New Hampshire, and Connecticut. 1 Cheap and easy methods of waste disposal are only cheap and easy when you do not take into account the true costs. Just as a value determines what materials are considered waste, a system of value determines who bears the burdens of waste; essentially, not just what, but who is waste. Throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century, our waste practices in New York demonstrate a higher value placed on the needs of wealthy, white Americans. Meanwhile, the burden of waste is placed on nonhuman ecologies, on future generations, and on low-income communities and communities of color. In this chapter, I will show how waste is connected to racial and economic injustice. First, I discuss how climate change exacerbates conditions of inequity, how the structure of our economy creates excessive waste, and how policy focusing on sustainability fails to recognize or prioritize issues of inequity in regard to our waste system. I will then look at the roots of our current practices from the perspective of city and federal policies and the struggle for dignity and life by communities in New York City severely impacted by waste disposal practices. I then step backwards in time and

We Are Disposable

look at historical conflations of race and waste, namely the association of whiteness with cleanliness and purity and how people of color have been presented as dirty and subhuman. Finally, I will look at how zoning and land use practices deliberately segregated people of color into areas of high risk, pollution, and indignity, and how those trends still exist today in planning practices that are structurally exclusionary.

Unsustainable Economies The urbanization and growth of the human species since the industrial revolution and the development of global capitalism has had an exponential effect on the consumption of resources; we are no longer on the brink, but falling into a world of anthropogenic climate change, widespread soil degradation, deforestation and desertification, and massive biodiversity loss.2 In large wealthy cities in the Global North, consumption draws increasingly from ecosystems and resources far outside of the local and regional land, such that our consumption and waste create ecological footprints that stretch across the globe, and can be hundreds of times larger than the cities themselves. The challenge of 21st century cities is not simply to become more efficient and lessen our rapacious destruction of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ecosystems, but to design ways of urban living that are regenerative and healing. 3

Figure 10. Diagram by Herbert Girardet/Rick Lawrence showing abstractly how a circular city maximizes resource conservation and reuse. From â&#x20AC;&#x153;Regenerative Citiesâ&#x20AC;? (2010).

Exporting Accountability

Figure 11. Annie Leonard’s narrated video from The Story of Stuff Project describes the linear economy in a comprehensive yet easy to understand manner. Graphic from Story of Stuff Project.

Disposal inherently creates risk through the concentration of toxins from waste and the systems of transporting and consolidating this waste. To understand how, we must understand how materials and products move through the economy and become waste. The primary economic model in today’s industrial world is a linear economy, in which materials are extracted, manufactured into products, distributed to consumers, bought and used, and then disposed of. Traditional analyses of waste examine this last component of the chain, which was called “final disposition”. In ecology, this stage of an organism’s lifecycle is death and decomposition, where nutrients are returned to the ecosystem, but industrial products are not organisms, and many of them do not decompose. Instead, we dispose of those products and their contents enter a strange state of limbo, remaining intact yet buried in landfill and refusing to share their bodies with the cycle of life. The difference between sustainable and unsustainable policies and practices is often characterized by whether the imperative of profit-driven efficiency of business and government services also includes a consideration of environmental efficiency, yet only where sustainability does not compromise business growth. Most sustainable design at the policy level focuses on being ‘less bad’, enforcing minimums of energy use, pollution, and waste, yet do not challenge the current methods of production or levels of consumption that have a negative environmental impact. Regenerative policies and practices see human social and cultural constructs – such as cities – as an inherent part of the ecosystem, not removed from it. Designing regenerative cities asks how we can create or restore the functioning of other species, of nutrient cycles and trophic cascades, to increase the capacity of the world to support life, even to encourage the proliferation of nonhuman life. 4 This can be done in ways that are not counter to human life, but seek to incorporate our involvement with the greater ecosystem in a positive way. Nature is not the Other that we must tame, master, or decouple from; rather, we are deeply enmeshed in these ecological processes. Our cities are a form of nature, and as such they must be designed to encourage the proliferation of life. New York City under Mayor de Blasio released a plan for drastically curbing its greenhouse gas (GHG) contributions, called the Roadmap to 80 x 50, in 2016. The city’s waste – from landfill-generated methane, waste-water treatment and the

We Are Disposable

associated flaring, and municipal waste export – is estimated to contribute to 4% of New York’s total GHG emissions.5 The report builds on the Pathways to Deep Carbon Reductions report released under Mayor Bloomberg in 2013, and likewise, incorporates changes in waste infrastructure alongside other integrated policy changes. This effort is essential, yet it focuses on sustainability by proposing reductions and efficiencies of existing methods instead of systemic change towards a city that is fundamentally regenerative. City-led efforts do not question the extent to which city-wide consumption and waste are linked to extraction of resources from ecosystems far beyond New York’s geography. Furthermore, the scope of our measurements lack the ability to measure the contributions of the construction of new industrial facilities, of maintaining interstate highways for the transport of waste, the production of plastic film for garbage bags, the production of heavy machinery for waste processing, or the contribution of a food system that relies heavily on fossil fuel fertilizers, and thus contributes to demand for fossil fuels. For instance, most statistics regarding waste in the US have historically cited statistics generated by municipal waste services. The most recent available federal data from the EPA claims that Americans generated about 258 million US tons of waste, from municipal sources – that is, residences, commercial establishments, and institutions. Since 1960, per capita consumption in America has slightly less than doubled, yet municipal solid waste generation has almost tripled. Of that amount, only about 89 million tons nationwide was recovered for recycling – about 34.6%.6 This data attempts to integrate statistics from material extraction and production, yet it does not include construction and demolition debris or waste from industrial processes. Yet this is the tip of the proverbial (albeit melting) iceberg. In her thorough analysis of waste policy based on over a decade of research and professional work in the waste management sector, Samantha MacBride cites EPA estimates that industrial waste generated by manufacturing products far exceeds municipal waste; compared to the 258 million US tons, about 7.6 billion U.S. tons of “Nonhazardous Industrial Wastes” are disposed of in the United States annually. 7 Based on these statistics, the municipal waste is at most 3% of the total stream. The impacts of climate change have already been felt in New York, where five years ago Hurricane Sandy left a wake of destruction. Yet the impacts of climate change have national and global consequences, with low-income people of color most at risk. As emissions continue to pour carbon and methane – forms of waste, in that they are byproducts from our industrial city and its machinations – into the atmosphere, fiercer storms, droughts, and sea-level rise threaten the rich biological systems that support human activity. Unfortunately, this thesis will not alone provide answers to the integrated and multi-scalar political and economic change we need to address these issues.

Exporting Accountability

Figure 12. NYC Waste Policy Timeline

We Are Disposable

Exporting Accountability

Waste (in)Equity in New York City Policy The modern organization of waste export has roots in the mid-20th century, when waste was mostly incinerated or landfilled locally. By examining how New York City arrived at its current arrangement of waste export, we can see how waste policy is characterized by short-term, top-down design solutions that perpetuate inequality and place burden on those deemed less valuable. The timeline on the previous pages helps illustrate key policies and facilities that have impacted New York City’s waste landscape; federal regulations, city sustainability initiatives, and environmental justice movements all played a major role. Federal and state regulations intended to protect the environment were an integral part of how New York City waste policy has formed in the last century. The Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965, Clean Air Act and Resource Recovery Act of 1970, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act or RCRA of 1976, the CERCLA or Superfund Act of 1980, and the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 had major impacts on industrial facilities across the country, including those that managed New York City’s waste. Incinerators were shut down for violating air pollution limits, unsanitary landfills lost their permits to operate, recycling measures were implemented, and stricter requirements about where municipal solid waste could be disposed of changed the landscape of options for municipal and commercial waste. While these changes were victories for the environmental movement, the health and environmental costs that regulations sought to remove or diminish were simply shifted to municipalities with weaker regulations and enforcement. Regulations are focused on permissible amounts of pollution and use scientific methods of proof that are best suited for laboratory conditions, and often the “acceptable” level of pollution or risk today still causes great harm to human and ecosystem health; environmental justice organizations have long criticized these methodologies in tandem with limited regulatory resources that often ignore or actively shift health and ecological costs onto low-income communities or communities of color at the benefit of industry. 8 Despite these continuing structural deficiencies, regulations definitively changed the shape of New York City waste policy. The other major changes came from environmental justice organizations responding to the unjust concentration of polluting facilities in their communities. After New Jersey successfully sued New York City to stop ocean dumping of garbage, most solid waste was disposed of in landfills or incinerators. Incineration peaked in the 1960s with 22 municipal incinerators, and many apartment buildings and institutions operated their own incinerators. Gradually, the health effects of smog and

We Are Disposable

smoke that filled industrial American cities – a sign of progress in the industrial era became one of the factors in the 20th century enticing wealthier Americans to flee to the newly developed – and “whites only” - suburbs. The last incinerator in New York City boundaries, the Bronx-Lebanon Medical Incinerator in the South Bronx, was shut down in 1999 by a decade of environmental justice activism from the community.9 Landfills in the outer boroughs of 20th century New York continued to accept city waste. The most well-known landfill in the city, and perhaps the world, was Fresh Kills. In 1948, the infamous Parks Commissioner and urban planner Robert Moses opened a temporary landfill in Staten Island in order to transform a tidal marshland into stable earth to create a park. What should have been open for only a few years became Fresh Kills Landfill, growing over the decades to cover 2,200 acres, and – with 150 million tons of solid waste – becoming the largest landfill on Earth.10 As other landfills in New York City were closed due to stricter Federal and State regulations, Fresh Kills became the primary landfill used by the city and commercial waste collectors. Concerned with reaching capacity, in 1989 the Department of Sanitation raised the tipping fees at Fresh Kills to discourage commercial waste haulers from using the site. Unfortunately, it worked. In response, a network of solid waste transfer stations emerged in the outer boroughs, where private waste is loaded onto long-haul trailer trucks and driven to landfills in distant states where tipping fees were lower. Due to zoning regulations, these transfer stations are concentrated in only a few neighborhoods, namely the industrial waterfront communities of Red Hook, Sunset Park, and Williamsburg-Greenpoint in North Brooklyn, in Hunts Point and Port Morris in the South Bronx, and in Jamaica, Queens. 11 In March 1996, Staten Island City Councilmembers and the Borough President filed a lawsuit against New York City to close Fresh Kills Landfill, citing health hazards, terrible odors, and principles of Fair Share in the City Charter.12 In December of 1996, Mayor Giuliani and Governor Pataki announced the closure of the landfill by December 2001. The closure of Fresh Kills shifted the burden away from the predominantly white, conservative, middle-class residents of Staten Island who had received much of the city’s trash for decades. To address the continuous flow of waste the city was charged with managing, contracts with private waste transfer stations and disposal companies were negotiated. These private contracts increased truck pollution in neighborhoods that hosted transfer stations as well as those with major expressways, and these concentrated nodes – and their adverse health effects – are still present today. 13 In November 1996, a mayoral-appointed committee released a report that proposed preserving and reusing existing marine transfer stations for handling garbage between boroughs, cautioned against export, and expressed a commitment to Fair Share and borough self-sufficiency.14 But in December of 1998, Mayor Giuliani’s office released a

Exporting Accountability

plan that ignored these recommendations and called for two gargantuan waste transfer stations in Red Hook, Brooklyn and in New Jersey.15 Export of all Manhattan and Queens residential waste would go through Newark and Carteret, New Jersey. Building large new facilities instead of retrofitting existing ones would lead to even more truck traffic in and near industrially zoned communities. Ignoring the same notions of Fair Share that Staten Island had successfully used in its argument to close Fresh Kills, DSNY policy rejected notions of borough self-sufficiency and prioritized export. This period began the privatization of residential solid waste collection and disposal; short term contracts began in 1997 for borough garbage, and the hiring private waste contractors to export waste out of the city doubled the Sanitation budget between 1997 and 2002 to over a billion dollars.16 In May 2000, a Solid Waste Management Plan (SWMP) was made in response to organizing by environmental justice groups such as the Organization of Waterfront Networks (OWN). The 2000 SWMP endorsed private rail and barge transfer, which

Figure 13. DSNY 2005 Solid Waste Export Disposal Network. 2006 Solid Waste Management Plan, p.11.

We Are Disposable

Figure 14. Proposed Facilities and Wastesheds. 2006 Solid Waste Management Plan, p.17

reduces pollution compared to exporting waste via trailer truck, but still processed all city waste through the outer boroughs. Additionally, Environmental Justice advocates pressured Mayor Giuliani to authorize a study of the commercial waste system, which eventually â&#x20AC;&#x201C; though finished long after Giuliani left office â&#x20AC;&#x201C; highlighted the inefficiencies of the system that effected communities with high concentrations of transfer stations.17 In 2006, the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new SWMP finally included a plan to build and retrofit rail and barge transit at existing municipal sites.18 The above map shows the proposed facility sites and what parts of the city each facility would accept residential waste from.

Exporting Accountability

As shown by these 2013 and 2016 SWMP updated progress maps, the use of private transfer stations in Brooklyn is intended to be replaced by barge and rail based transfer stations, and the scattering of transfer stations in New Jersey and Yonkers that handled Manhattan and Queens waste would be consolidated as well; for Manhattan, all waste would be either trucked to Newark, New Jersey to be burned at Covanta’s Waste-To-Energy facility or taken by barge from the 91st street Marine Transfer Station. That waste would probably be brought to the WTE Facility (incinerator) in Newark or at Covanta’s Niagara Falls facility. DSNY has also sent waste to the WTE incinerator owned by Wheelabrator in Peekskill, New York. Good news for the people of Williamsburg – a

Figure 15. 2013 update of progress on 2006 SWMP. PlaNYC Sustainability and Solid Waste: Doubling NYC’s Diversion Rate by 2017.

gentrifying neighborhood – and bad news for low-income residents of the Ironbound community in Newark (more on this later in the chapter). While Fresh Kills Landfill has been transformed into the Elysian sanctuary of Freshkills Park, replete with wildflowers and waterfowl – that is, if you can forget the millions of tons of decaying strata underneath – the city’s waste burden is still concentrated in only a few communities. DSNY’s FY2019 Proposed Export Network continues to use existing transfer stations in only a few communities and send waste to incinerators and landfills outside city limits. Despite the 2006 SWMP promising to build marine transfer stations in each borough, only a few of these facilities have been built. South Brooklyn’s WTS is still not operational, and Manhattan’s transfer station – waylaid by the political power of a wealthy community – is scheduled to open late 2018, 8 years

We Are Disposable

Figure 16. 2006 SWMP Facilities Updated Plan, DSNY, 2016. Courtesy of Open House New York.

after the target date of 2010. In the remaining boroughs, long-term export contracts with large waste haulers continue to process waste in overburdened communities.19 The Transform Don’t Trash Coalition facilitated the collection of data on air quality and truck concentration in North Brooklyn and the South Bronx, finding concentrations of asthma inducing pollutants – PM2.5 – between 2x and 7x greater than the average for those areas. Community members who participated in the study counted on average one commercial waste truck per minute in Bushwick, a neighborhood in North Brooklyn, and one commercial waste truck every 24 seconds in Hunts Point in the South Bronx.20 Based on data from 2017 Waste Transfer Stations in New York City, the following maps show the location of the city’s most active transfer stations.

Exporting Accountability

Figure 17. NYC Waste Transfer Stations by Tonnnage, 2017. Created in Carto by Author from NY DEC data.

According to documents required to be submitted annually to NY State DEC by waste transfer stations operating in New York City, one can visually see the amount of municipal solid waste processed in specific neighborhoods. This map uses data for nonhazardous municipal solid waste (garbage, from both residential and commercial sources) only. The same neighborhoods also host infrastructure for recyclable commodity collection, C&D waste, and hazardous wastes, but to simplify the image, only municipal waste is measured. The South Bronx overwhelmingly received the most waste, but North Brooklyn, Flushing, Queens, and the neighborhoods of Red Hook and Sunset Park also received a significant waste burden.

We Are Disposable

By taking a closer look at the neighborhoods with the highest concentration of municipal solid waste transfer stations and where they export waste, a socio-spatial geography is visible. The highest concentrations of transfer stations as well as the landfills and incinerators they export to are in neighborhoods with high concentrations of non-white residents, and have high concentrations of households under the federal poverty level; the national household median income was 55,322 in 2016, and 15.1% of Americans had income below the poverty level.21

South Bronx Flushing, Queens North Brooklyn Sunset Park Covanta Essex WTE (Incineration) Facility in Newark, NJ also receives a large amount of Manhattanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s solid waste: tonnage not available, but facility is permitted to burn over 900,000 tons per year. Map Data from NYS DEC annual reports only, self-reported from NY Region 2 transfer stations.

Figure 18. NYC Solid Waste Transfer Stations Key.

Exporting Accountability

2010 Census Block Data 1 Dot = 1 Person White Black Asian Hispanic Other Races Transfer Station / Disposal Facility

Flushing, Queens

DSNY owned Marine Transfer Station sent 441,018 Tons of MSW to Upstate New York to be Incinerated

College Point Area Population: 49,573 White: 3,111 (6.3%) Black: 5,585 (11.3%) Latino: 25,531 (51.5%) Asian: 14,138 (28.5%)

Median Income: $43,378 Below Poverty Level: 23.6% Source: 2012-16 ACS, NYC DCP

Population by Race Point Map : 2013, Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia (Dustin A. Cable, creator) overlaid onto Carto Map by Author Population Statistics by Census Tracts : 2012-2016 American Community Survey, NYC Dept of Planning

Figure19. Flushing Waste Transfer Stations and Demographics.

We Are Disposable

Covanta Niagara WTE Facility (Incinerator) Received 441,018 Tons of Queens MSW from North Shore MTS in 2017

(Love Canal)

2010 Census Block Data 1 Dot = 1 Person White Black

Niagara Falls, NY

Population : 50,891 White: 37,936 (74.5%) Black: 10,561 (20.8%) Latino: 1,397 (2.7%)

Asian Hispanic Other Races

400 miles from New York

Median Income: $31,452 Below Poverty Level: 21.8%

Transfer Station / Disposal Facility

Love Canal, where Hooker Chemical Corporation dumped toxic waste until the 1950s and then sold the land to the city for $1, garnered national attention for the anti-toxics movement in the 1970s when the clay seal broke and chemical exposure ravaged the community

Source: 2010 US Census Data

DSNY signed a $2.8B, 20 year contract with Covanta in 2013 to burn Queens and Manhattan residential waste here and in NJ Population by Race Point Map (top): 2013, Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia (Dustin A. Cable, creator), Satellite Map (bottom): GoogleMaps screenshot

Figure 20. Niagara Falls WTE Plant and Demographics.

Exporting Accountability

South Bronx 9 Transfer Stations handled 1,778,698 Tons of Solid Waste in 2017, the highest in the city

South Bronx Area

Population: 113,075 White: 1,769 (1.6%) Black: 31,488 (27.9%) Latino: 77,444 (68.5%) Asian: 1,312 (1.2%) Median Income: $22,826 Below Poverty Level: 42.9% Source: 2012-16 ACS, NYC DCP

2010 Census Block Data 1 Dot = 1 Person White Black Asian Hispanic Other Races Transfer Station / Disposal Facility

WM Harlem River Yard 627,749 Tons Action Environmental Services 566,402 Tons

Metropolitan Transfer Station 214,467 Tons Environmental Transload Services 213,623 Tons

Figure 21. South Bronx Waste Transfer Stations and Demographics.

We Are Disposable

Atlantic Landfill

Owned by Waste Management 377 Miles from New York

2010 Census Block Data 1 Dot = 1 Person White Black Asian

(Sussex State Prison)

Hispanic Other Races

Slated to receive entire 2019 Bronx MSW stream (approximately 420,000 Tons)

Transfer Station / Disposal Facility

Waverly, Virginia

Population : 2,965 White: 899 (30.3%) Black: 1,972 (66.5%) Latino: 94 (3.2%) Median Income: $35,956 Below Poverty Level: 9.8% Source: 2010 US Census Data

Population by Race Point Map (top): 2013, Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia (Dustin A. Cable, creator), Satellite Map (bottom): GoogleMaps screenshot

Figure 22. Atlantic Landfill and Demographics.

Exporting Accountability

Transfer Stations in North Brooklyn received 1,267,890 Tons of Solid Waste in 2017, the second highest in the city 2010 Census Block Data 1 Dot = 1 Person White Black Asian

WM Review Ave Transfer Station 270099 Tons WM BQE Transfer Station 277048 Tons

Hispanic Other Races Transfer Station / Disposal Facility

Newtown Creek Area

WM Varick 1 Transfer Station 420112 Tons

Hi-Tech Resource Recovery City Green 148,885 Tons 151,746 Tons

Population: 56,193 White: 19,788 (35.2%) Black: 4,456 (7.9%) Latino: 27,957 (49.8%) Asian: 2,891 (5.1%)

Median Income: $58,985 Below Poverty Level: 24.7% Source: 2012-16 ACS, NYC DCP

Newtown Creek / North Brooklyn

Figure 23. North Brooklyn Waste Transfer Stations and Demographics.

We Are Disposable

Red Hook / Sunset Park IESI NY 110-50th St 306,927 Tons

IESI NY Court St 225,856 Tons

Hamilton Ave MTS (DSNY) 58,466 Tons (Opened in Fall 2017)

2010 Census Block Data 1 Dot = 1 Person White Black Asian Hispanic Other Races Transfer Station / Disposal Facility

Sunset Park Area

Population: 78,582 White: 22,937 (29.2%) Black: 5,817 (7.4%) Latino: 40,750 (51.9%) Asian: 7,003 (8.9%) Median Income: $57,526 Below Poverty Level: 25% Source: 2012-16 ACS, NYC DCP

Transfer Stations in this area received 591,249 Tons of Solid Waste in 2017 (and at least 480,000 Tons of Recylables at SIMS MRF)

Figure 24. Red Hook Waste Transfer Stations and Demographics.

Exporting Accountability

Grows North Landfill, Morrisville, PA Owned by Waste Management

Trenton, NJ

(New Jersey)

Population: 84,913 White: 22,549 (26.6%) Black: 44,160 (52.0%) Latino: 28,621 (33.7%) Asian: 1,013 (1.2%) Median Income: $34,412 Below Poverty Level: 27.6%

(Pennsylvania)

Source: 2012-16 ACS, US Census 2010 Census Block Data 1 Dot = 1 Person

Fairless Landfill Tullytown Landfill

White Black

Wheelabrator WTE (Incinerator)

Asian Hispanic Other Races Transfer Station / Disposal Facility

70 Miles from New York

Received NYC Waste in 2017 From: Waste Management BQE : 247,257 Tons Action Environmental Systems : 242,140 Tons Waste Management Varick 1 : 137,435 Tons Brooklyn Transfer, LLC : 124,508 Tons Hi-Tech Resource Recovery : 21,727 Tons IESI 110-50th St : 7,646 Tons Regal Recycling Co : 2440 Tons IESI Court St : 1244 Tons

Total : 784,397 Tons Population by Race Point Map (top): 2013, Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia (Dustin A. Cable, creator), Satellite Map (bottom): GoogleMaps screenshot

Figure 25. Grows North Landfill and Demographics.

We Are Disposable

Geographies of waste that separate people and land into hierarchies of value along lines of race and class are not only the result of discriminatory policy; they are a part of the legacy of white supremacy in American culture. Structural inequality was built out of racist associations of dirt, filth, and garbage with immigrants and people of color.

Filthy People – Race and Class Divisions and Conceptions of Waste In New York, the city government has long distributed burdens of waste unevenly. In the 18th and 19th centuries, waste was largely organic material, and the surrounding landscape was the destination for discards that were not used for animal feed or manufacturing. As the population grew, the concentration of offal and human waste turned ponds to stinking cesspools. In these early days of Dutch and English settlement, it was African slaves that collected waste and dug the ditches and canals for it to be buried in. As New York grew into an industrial metropolis, the urban poor picked through scraps or were paid to cart away waste; today waste hauling companies are still called “carters”. These jobs were most often filled by recent immigrants who lacked other opportunities. The association of Irish, Italian, and Slavic immigrants in the 19th century – those who most often operated waste hauling businesses – with dirt and filth arose from the same concepts of racial purity that relegated indigenous tribes and Africans to a status less than human. When engineer and Colonel George Waring was appointed Commissioner of the Department of Street Cleaning – now the Department of Sanitation – in 1895, he vowed to reform the corrupt and inefficient systems of waste hauling associated with the political machine of Tammany Hall. Amassing a veritable army of white-uniformed street sweepers, he hired Southern and Eastern Europeans to do the work, claiming their tolerance for filth to be higher.22 Racism in the United States has long determined who is considered valuable or dirty and disposable; the United States Constitution counted African slaves as 3/5ths of a complete person. After the Civil War, white supremacist organizations such as the KKK and the pseudo-science of eugenics – claiming that European races were superior to other races – arose in America at the same time as the sanitation movement. In a social order newly without the slavery of African people, white Americans created justifications for continuing to deny equal rights and wealth to people of color on moral and hygienic grounds. Thomas Dixon Jr. wrote of the moral impurity of Black people in “The Leopard’s Spots” and “The Clansmen” and inspired D.W. Griffith’s film “Birth of a Nation”, which portrayed African Americans as violent rapists that threatened the chastity of white women and the purity of the white race. Such narratives not only belied the decades

Exporting Accountability

Figure 26. Many soap advertisements from the late 19th century used comparisons between dirt and people of color.

We Are Disposable

of cruelty, oppression, and dehumanizing conditions African Americans experienced under slavery and inspired a new legacy of racial terror by whites that forced African Americans to flee the South by the millions at the turn of the century. As cities and jobs associated with sanitation and cleanliness grew, immigrants and African Americans were overrepresented in sanitation labor.23 African American women in post-bellum and early 20th century America worked overwhelmingly in domestic and cleaning industries. At the same time as these tasks fell to people of color and immigrants, media and advertising reinforced the idea that people of color were inferior and dirty; Black caricatures like Sambo, Mamie, Jim Crow, Sapphire, Jezebel, and Mandingo depicted African Americans as lazy, promiscuous, aggressive, and unintelligent, and many soap advertisements depicted black people washing only to reveal their white, pure skin underneath.24 The conflation with people of color and dirt gained popularity during the same period that professionalized sanitation engineering was credited with saving cities from contagious disease. Although germ theory quickly proved that sanitation or cleanliness was not connected to the spread of infectious diseases, the link persists; cleanliness and purity is still associated with whiteness. Indigenous people in America were also associated with dirt and immoral behavior; Proctor & Gambleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 1893 soap advertisement implied that soap and cleanliness had rendered the American Indian civilized, instead of decades of genocide and forced displacement by the American military.25 John Muir, famed naturalist and first president of the Sierra Club described Native Americans as filthy and depraved during his travels; their removal from traditional lands that tribes had managed for centuries if not millennia precipitated the creation of uninhabited wilderness areas set aside for white tourists by the 1964 Wilderness Act.26 Just as Native people were displaced from the forests, plain, and marshes of New England, Appalachia, the Midwest, and the South, the majestic landscape of the West was deemed too valuable for Native Americans to inhabit; exclusivity and access for white Americans to camp and hike turned these lands into national treasures. In cities, land value determined who lived where. Immigrant workers in growing American cities were forced to live in crowded tenements close to factories. When zoning and policies were first created in 1916 in New York City, it separated working people and industry from elite commercial districts and middle-class residences. A legacy of racial zoning and redlining, racially restrictive deeds, and discriminatory lending practices confined the urban poor and communities of color to specific areas. Zoning has been used as a tool to protect property values of the wealthy by creating scarcity and demand.27 Although zoning laws may claim to serve the health of communities by keeping residential districts separate from industry, decisions regarding zoning in New York have never been made in or by communities living near industry.

Exporting Accountability

Hierarchy of Land Value: Racial Zoning and Waste Infrastructure Assigning value to black and brown bodies involves putting those bodies in particular places; value is embodied in our practices, and how we value the Earth and land is no different. Our relationship to land itself is an important part of systemic environmental inequality. Modern, convenient urban living is made possible by the existence of places of extraction, production, transportation, and waste outside of highvalue communities, in spaces of “otherness”, out of sight and consequence for most consumers. Yet the effect is felt by the poor and people of color living near these spaces of otherness, those communities and “others” who are exposed to the hazard and risk of these systems. These are the communities that Environmental Justice scholar Robert Bullard calls “Toxic Time Bombs”.28 In this way, land use creates a hierarchy of value on land just as a hierarchy of value is placed on human bodies; who gets to live in dignity and safe from pollution, and who does not. Designations of land use are expressions of control. In the European settling of New York, waste has been used to tame land that was considered unruly or dangerous; particularly by draining and filling swamps and marshes. Waste was used to change the fluid and inconstant boundaries of a marshy waterfront into dry land that is more amenable to real estate; downtown Manhattan today is built on landfill from throughout the city’s history. Swamps and marshes were seen as useless and treacherous spaces – wastelands –where diseases were born. Before Robert Moses, the area that became Fresh Kills Landfill was a large swath of salt marshes that provided habitat for many wildlife species. When NYC Parks Commissioner Robert Moses announced his plan in 1945 to transform the 500-acre tidal wetland into a park, he described it as “an unsightly and unsanitary wasteland”.29 As unruly land must be tamed and mastered, so have the bodies of people of color been organized, controlled, and oppressed. Redlining, discriminatory lending, and the siting of public housing kept low-income and working people, communities of color and immigrants in land deemed less valuable or undesirable by government and moneyed interests, such as the marshlands and industrially zoned neighborhoods of the Ironbound and waterfront communities in New York City.30 After slavery was abolished, many towns in the American South established “sundown” rules that warned African Americans and other people of color that if found within city limits after dark, they would be extrajudicially beaten or killed. Racial terrorism in the South caused many Black people to flee to cities in the North and West; the growing populations in cities from people of color fleeing the South and immigrants from abroad were met with racially motivated fears of urban white Americans. Suburban growth in 20th century

We Are Disposable

America was not only in response to crowded cities and noxious industry, but fears surrounding racial purity. Zoning and Redlining are two examples of how bodies were racially segregated to be kept in their “proper place” within urban space. Zoning is widely considered a method for protecting public health by establishing zones and regulations for the built environment. The 1916 Zoning regulations classified land use into three categories: residential, business, or unrestricted, which was often industrial. While New York City’s zoning policies were never explicitly racist, the regulations contributed to discrimination through the shape of the land use policies and designations. Zoning was (and is) a tool for economic development interests. Overbuilding and speculation prior to the 1916 rules had greatly depreciated land values, and manufacturing uses – and the accompanying working-class residences – were encroaching on wealthy commercial districts. Elites were abhorred by the presence of immigrant workers and lofts in the same neighborhoods as their wealthy shops. Real estate developers and 5th Avenue elites supported zoning to protect property values and segregate industrial land uses from commercial districts.31 Redlining is the term used to describe a collection of policies and practices that contributed to the creation of ghettos for non-white Americans in cities. In the Great Depression, US Congress created a federal program of property appraisal as part of the New Deal legislation. Beginning in 1933, the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) trained appraisers to perform community surveys and created Residential Securities Maps that rated the home values of certain geographies based on existing populations; the surveyors were taught to look for detrimental influences, such as existing housing quality, level of income, and most importantly, the presence of people of color. This practice essentially segregated non-whites into specific geographies. Known as “redlining” because the color code corresponded with the ratings (red being the lowest), these maps advised investment trends and impacted the ability for homes and businesses to get loans. As ratings were given based on income, occupation, and race of residents, with people of color, Jews, immigrants, and working-class people receiving the lowest rating of “D” in areas lined with red, low-rating areas were refused federal insurance for homes and lowered land values of property inhabited by people of color. This also meant that redlined communities could not receive loans to make home improvements, and as such, the housing in these areas further deteriorated.

Exporting Accountability

Figure 27. Bronx HOLC map, 1938. Source: Mapping Inequality

Color Key: Green or A : “Best”, Blue or B: “Still Desirable”, Yellow or C : “Definitely Declining”, and Red or D : “Hazardous”

We Are Disposable

Active Solid Waste Transfer Stations in 2017 Figure 28. Bronx HOLC map, 1938 with 2017 Solid Waste Transfer Stations.

2017 Solid Waste Transfer Stations in New York City are located in close proximity to communities with C or D ratings from the 1930s; these maps demonstrate how present land use policies are built on a geography of racial segregation.

Exporting Accountability

Active Solid Waste Transfer Stations in 2017

Figure 29. Manhattan HOLC map, 1938 overlaid with 2017 Solid Waste Transfer Stations

We Are Disposable

Covanta Essex WTE (Incinerator) receives waste from Manhattan DSNY and other vendors; over 900,000 Tons Per Year is permitted.

Figure 30. Essex County, New Jersey HOLC map, 1939 showing suburban development in New Jersey, overlaid with Covanta-Essex WTE Facility.

Exporting Accountability

Active Solid Waste Transfer Stations in 2017 Figure 31. Brooklyn HOLC map, 1938 overlaid with 2017 Solid Waste Transfer Stations

We Are Disposable

Active Solid Waste Transfer Stations in 2017 Figure 32. Queens HOLC map, 1938 overlaid with 2017 Solid Waste Transfer Stations

Exporting Accountability

Section C specifically looked for percentage of foreign-born residents, in this case 50% Russians, Austrians, and Hungarians. Pre-WWII, many non-Anglo Europeans were not considered “white”, and “Russian” was used to describe Jewish residents

Section F looked for “relief families”, or those on public assistance programs Section D of Area Description specifically looked for the “Negro” presence.

Figure 33. Area Description Survey competed by HOLC of Area D-5 (Hazardous) in the Bronx.

We Are Disposable

When the very presence of people of color lowered home values, white Americans became fearful of mixed-race neighborhoods. Opportunistic capitalists scared white homeowners into selling their homes at low prices by hiring people of color to conspicuously walk through the neighborhood; the broker would then sell them a home in the new suburbs, and sell the home at an inflated value to black Americans hoping for a better life in a good neighborhood. These mortgages often included predatory clauses that reverted ownership to the seller if only one payment was missed or late. This practice was known as “block-busting”, and encouraged the mass exodus of white Americans from cities into new – whites only - suburban developments that were funded by the US government after World War II. GI Bill loans were denied to veterans of color, though they had fought and died for their country alongside their white counterparts. Notably, this fear of association caused many ethnic white Americans – German, Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Slavic immigrants, for example – to assimilate into an emerging white American middle class, characterized by conspicuous consumption and suburban living. Until the Fair Housing Act of 1968, many homes and neighborhoods advertised restrictive racial covenants, so that people of color would never be able to purchase or inhabit the property. (Of course, exceptions were made for black servants.) As wealthy and middle-class white Americans fled urban centers, income from property taxes in cities fell sharply, undermining the social services cities were able to fund. Planned shrinkage and urban renewal policies pulled critical city services like firefighting, police, and sanitation from poor communities of color and bulldozed others, calling them slums, oblivious to the community networks that people of color had built for themselves (see Black Wall Street in Kansas City, or the famous Harlem and it’s legendary art scene). Unfortunately, these urban policies failed to consider – or perhaps acknowledge – that the same neighborhoods had been prevented federally-insured investments by redlining maps and denied investments from city hall. This collection of policies and practices formed and enforced racially and economically segregated cities across America.32 In 1961, a new set of zoning regulations created zoning districts R (residential), C (commercial), and M (manufacturing). The idea of separating people and land uses into their proper geographic zones was used by central planning agencies to protect property values and elite interests under the name of protection. The process also denies the right for residents to speak for themselves, a central tenet of Environmental Justice. Furthermore, as Julie Sze aptly states, “This assumption of people and uses in their proper place denied the reality that low-income and racial minority populations have always been overrepresented in what became designated by city agencies as nonresidential districts.”33 Today, waste infrastructure must be sited in M3 Zoning districts, areas designated for heavy industry and the accompanying noise, traffic, and pollution.34

Exporting Accountability

Figure 34. M3 (Heavy Industry) Zoning Areas in NYC. Courtesy of NYC Planning, ZoLa: New York Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Zoning & Land Use Map.

Zoning regulations limit the ability to make permissible repairs or improvements, and housing quality and values plummet, encouraging abandonment and disinvestment. Overall, zoning changes in New York City between 1961 and 1998 have redistributed and concentrated manufacturing and industry in communities of color and lowincome neighborhoods outside Manhattan, in areas such as Sunset Park, Red Hook, and Williamsburg.35 Zoning protected business interests within central and downtown Manhattan as well. While Manhattan today produces more commercial waste than all of the other boroughâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s combined, this zoning arrangement means that waste is all processed at transfer stations in the outer boroughs.

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Figure 35. M3 (Heavy Industry) Zoning Areas in South Bronx. Courtesy of NYC Planning, ZoLa: New York Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Zoning & Land Use Map.

Industrial zoning of the 20th century reinforced the land uses established by redlining. In protest of the layered burdens of living near these facilities, communities of color united against the siting of sewage treatment plants, power plants, and incinerators in their neighborhoods. In the South Bronx and East Harlem, bus depots, waste transfer stations, sewage and sludge treatment plants, and a food distribution hub that services half the Tri-State area all stack atop one another in a complex landscape of pollution from multiple public and private sources. The South Bronx Clean Air Coalition organized the community and shut down the Bronx-Lebanon medical waste incinerator in 1998; in 2000, Bronx had the highest rates of asthma hospitalizations of children and

Exporting Accountability

Figure 36. M3 (Heavy Industry) Zoning Areas in North Brooklyn. Courtesy of NYC Planning, ZoLa: New York City’s Zoning & Land Use Map.

adults of any borough.36 In Sunset Park, UPROSE and Sunset Park United defeated a proposal for a sludge treatment plant under Mayor Dinkins.37 In West Harlem, where 6 of 7 MTA bus depots in Manhattan are located and residents are overwhelmingly Black and Latino, the environmental justice group WE ACT fought against a North River Sludge Treatment Plant in the 1990s. In Williamsburg, the Hassidic Jewish community united with the Dominican and Puerto Rican communities – an alliance that contradicted typical tensions in North Brooklyn – to fight against the proposed Brooklyn Navy Yard Incinerator in the 1980s. Williamsburg and Greenpoint host waste transfer

We Are Disposable

stations, petrochemical storage tanks, a large sewage treatment plant, brownfields, and industrial storage facilities holding thousands of pounds of hazardous materials.38 In a system of waste export, the final destination is still an incinerator or landfill, only now the effects are further out-of-sight and out-of-mind for most New Yorkers. Only those living near transfer stations are subjected to the impacts of the city waste stream. The city claimed in 2006 that a system of exporting waste through transfer stations would result in “no significant adverse environmental impacts” and required companies gaining contracts to gain approval from the communities that hosted private waste transfer stations. Yet for the communities that host these transfer stations, the health impacts include higher rates of asthma, developmental issues, and noise and heavy truck traffic at all hours. In 1998, residents of the South Bronx and East Harlem successfully shut down the last incinerator in New York City. Between 1997 and 2000, rates of asthma in neighborhoods with the highest rates declined significantly; in Hunts Point-Mott Haven, hospitalization rates declines by 56%, and in East Harlem, despite still having the highest rates of childhood asthma in NYC, hospitalization rates declined by 41%.39 While institutions and scientific authorities are historically reluctant to make definitive connections between environmental causes – such as incinerators – and health impacts, community members are experts in their own right; after all, they live, work, and breathe in the urban environments in question. One of the Principles of Environmental Justice is to let communities of color speak for themselves, to empower them to be authorities on their own lives and experiences. Groups like the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance utilize a mixture of on-the-ground knowledge with citizen science as a methodology for data collection and presentation. Emphasizing the experience of people of color in their own words challenges mainstream practices of white, male “experts” that make paternalistic decisions on land use and “acceptable amounts of pollution” experienced by working people and people of color. In 2013 the Transform Don’t Trash Coalition was born out of the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance. Since then, they have released several reports documenting the pollution created through the concentration of private waste facilities, how it impacts low-income communities and communities of color where these facilities are located, and the effects on the health and safety of workers in the private waste industry. Their work focuses mainly on the South Bronx and North Brooklyn, where 75% of the city’s waste is processed. The collection of material from all over the city is processed in only a few neighborhoods; most MSW is sent to North Brooklyn, Southeast Queens, and South Bronx. All municipal plastic and metal recycling and much of the private recycling stream is sent to the SIMS facility in Sunset Park. The concentration of diesel truck traffic in these neighborhoods fills the air with particulate pollution, and these neighborhoods

Exporting Accountability

struggle with high rates of asthma and other health problems.40 For example, the Transform Don’t Trash Coalition (TDT) facilitated the collection of data on air quality and truck concentration in North Brooklyn and the South Bronx, finding concentrations of asthma inducing pollutants – PM2.5 – between 2x and 7x greater than the average for those areas. This study found that commercial waste vehicles were a large portion of the traffic traveling through residential neighborhoods close to transfer stations; TDT cites a Department of Transportation study highlighting how commercial waste haulers use routes through high density residential neighborhoods. Community members who participated in the study counted on average one commercial waste truck per minute in Bushwick, a neighborhood in North Brooklyn, and one commercial waste truck every 24 seconds in Hunts Point in the South Bronx. The report also documents the negative health impacts on the drivers of commercial waste trucks, who breathe fine particulate matter known to cause asthma (PM2.5) on average at a rate 7x higher than ambient levels.41 Direct pollution from waste management comes in a variety of forms. Local impacts from transfer stations include diesel exhaust, noise, and truck. For communities near incinerators, dioxins in the air from burning certain types of waste can escape filters. Communities in rural areas where today’s landfills are located – or residents of Staten Island when Fresh Kills Landfill was in operation – live with stench and toxic leachate from the anaerobic decay of putrescible waste seeping into soil and water. Yet often these effects compound with other burdens; poverty, other industries such as power plants, transportation hubs, chemical plants, and oil refineries all share similar land use patterns; they are excluded spaces of “Otherness”, that exist so those with higher value can live out of sight and out of mind of the harm being caused. The Ironbound neighborhood is an example of how accountability for waste is exported to a neighborhood of working class and poor immigrants and people of color by “Othering” the land and people. The vast marsh ecosystem known as the meadowlands was filled in with garbage dumping and industry. The hidden physical infrastructure necessary to the modern city is relegated to this undesirable land, including trash incinerators, sewage plants, seaports, airports, chemical plants, power plants, and prisons. These sacrificial zones of pollution exist across the country, alongside concentrated pockets of poor communities of color. These communities exist because of unfair housing policies, unregulated industrial pollution in communities of color, and economic disinvestment. Through a process of “othering”, some land and people are excluded from certain environmental protections and benefits.42 As scholar, EJ activist, and Newark resident Ana Baptista notes, the regulatory and siting practices of city and state government permit pollution to occur by measuring pollution and its health effects after its occurrence, and by asking environmental justice

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communities to bear the double burden of suffering those effects and being responsible for proving those effects. By excluding communities from the planning process of land use, the structure of government decision-making allows industry permission to pollute and the power of land valuation through what is argued to be economically rational. Critical to the principles of Environmental Justice is the ability for communities to speak and act for themselves. Therefore, through this exclusion from planning and decision making processes, people in these communities suffer from environmental injustice. Land Use regulations such as the creation of community boards and principles of Fair Share in the City Charter were created to give communities to have a forum for insight into what changes are happening in their neighborhood and a voice in the planning and development of such. Processes like ULURP – Uniform Land Use Review Procedure – give neighborhoods the ability to form their own plans, approve new developments, and advise the Department of Planning through their community board. Yet the city government is not legally bound by any of the recommendations of a community board; it is an advisory group only. “Fair Share” regulations call for equitable balancing considerations in the siting of city facilities. Section 203 of the 1989 City Charter requires Department of City Planning to further the fair distribution of the burdens and benefits associated with city facilities. This mention in the city charter is meant to address and stop poorly planned or secretive facility siting decisions. In December 1990, 197A “Criteria for the Location of City Facilities”, also known as the Fair Share criteria, allowed community boards to use this language to advise the city on facility siting by creating their own community drafted plans. Still, after a 197A plan is submitted to City Planning by the Community Board, DCP can ignore, accept, or modify the plan.43 As ULURP and Fair Share have no legal power to challenge decisions made by city agencies, they offer no real change in zoning practice or facility siting. Without real power to make decisions about land use, communities in New York must pressure those who hold legislative power. Antonio Reynoso, City Council Member for the district including Williamsburg and Bushwick where much of the city’s waste is brought to transfer stations, introduced a bill to City Council in 2014 that would limit the amount of waste processed by any one community district. Known as Intro 495-A, the bill would reduce the permitted capacity at putrescible and non-putrescible solid waste transfer stations in overburdened community districts in New York City.44 The bill failed to garner enough support to pass, and was reintroduced as 495-B and 495-C, losing the critical vote of its third incarnation as City Council Member Daneek Miller representing Southeast Queens – whom had supported the bill since 2014 – withdrew his support in December of 2017, presumably at the behest of waste industry lobbyists.45 The bill was designed to support the principles of Fair Share and borough equity that were written

Exporting Accountability

into the city charter and further laid out in the 2006 SWMP, and was strongly supported by Reynoso and Steve Levin (also representing North Brooklyn) and Rafael Salamanca who represents the overburdened district in the South Bronx. In response, some city council members â&#x20AC;&#x201C; including Miller â&#x20AC;&#x201C; have written and sponsored a bill to reduce overconcentration of city facilities in certain community districts. While not specifically targeting the capacity for waste transfer stations, the bill would reduce the siting of city facilities in areas with high concentrations of similar facilities.46 The bill does not address commercial facilities, which are a large part of the problem for waste infrastructure. Whether this bill will pass, and whether it will have an impact on reducing waste burdens where it is most needed, is yet to be seen.

Estimated Commercial Waste by Borough

8% 15%

Manhattan : 1,458,000 tons/year Brooklyn : 425,000 tons/year Queens : 391,000 tons/year

56%

Bronx : 217,000 tons/year

17%

Staten Island : 92,000 tons/year

New York City Commercial Waste Solid Waste Study and Analysis, 2012 : Summary Report. NYC Department of Sanitation.

Average Residential Waste by Borough

7% 17%

31%

Brooklyn : 3057 tons/day Queens : 2589 tons/day Manhattan : 1765.9 tons/day

18% 27%

Bronx : 1710.5 tons/day Staten Island : 645.2 tons/day

Annual Report: New York City Curbside and Containerized Municipal Refuse and Recycling Statistics by Borough and District: FISCAL YEAR 2017. NYC Department of Sanitation.

Figure 37. Waste Produced by Borough, Data from DSNY 2012 and 2017

Consistent with Census Population Data by Borough +/- 1%

We Are Disposable

Insights The struggle against environmental racism has pushed New York City to end some unsustainable practices, but in general the same inequalities and wasteful methods persist. Much of the risk is now exported outside of the city, or relegated to specific neighborhoods, perpetuating land use policies that place the burden on low income people and people in color in South Bronx, North Brooklyn, New Jersey, and Queens. Wealthy parts of Manhattan still lack any type of waste infrastructure, despite producing over half of all the commercial waste in the city (see Figure 37); even the 91st St station scheduled to open this year is close to East Harlem, with Latino and African American communities in Northern Manhattan historically receiving the most facilities and infrastructural burden. Racial zoning and racist ideas about immigrants and people of color in the era where Sanitation emerged created the foundation of injustice on which present inequality manifests. Understanding this divide is necessary to bring equity to city services that seek to improve sustainability, such as diverting organic waste from the waste stream, so that all people share in the promise of a more sustainable New York. As the Department of Sanitation begins residential organic waste collection and increases the number of businesses required to sort organic waste for commercial haulers, the same network of transfer stations will receive this waste for export. As I will demonstrate in the following chapters, community composting of organic waste offers myriad benefits both in health impacts of reducing truck pollution, improving soil quality when used as amendment, and supporting urban agriculture and food justice initiatives.

Exporting Accountability

Endnotes 1 NYS DEC, “Index of Annual Reports Solid Waste Management Region 2,” Database, Index of /dshm/SWMF/Annual Reports_Solid Waste Management Facility/ Annual Reports_by Activity Type/Transfer Facilities/Transfer Annual Reports - 2017/ R2/, accessed April 17, 2018, ftp://ftp.dec.state.ny.us/dshm/SWMF/Annual%20Reports_ Solid%20Waste%20Management%20Facility/Annual%20Reports_by%20Activity%20Type/ Transfer%20Facilities/Transfer%20Annual%20Reports%20-%202017/R2/. 2 Gro Harlem Brundtland, “Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future” (United Nations, 1987). 3 Herbert Girardet, “Regenerative Cities” (World Future Council and HafenCity University Commission on Cities and Climate Change, 2010), 2. 4 Herbert Girardet, 13. 5 NYC Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, “New York City’s Roadmap to 80 x 50” (New York City, 2016), 9. 6 US EPA, “Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: 2014 Tables and Figures,” December 2016. 7 Samantha MacBride, Recycling Reconsidered: The Present Failure and Future Promise of Environmental Action in the United States, Urban and Industrial Environments (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2012), 242. 8 Ana I. Baptista, “Finding Hope at the Margins: A Journey of Environmental Justice,” in Ecological and Social Healing: Multicultural Women’s Voices, ed. Jeanine M. Canty (New York, NY: Routledge, 2017); Julie Sze, Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice (Cambridge, Massachussetts.: MIT Press, 2007). 9 Julie Sze, Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice, 74. 10 Julie Sze, 112; NYC Parks Dept, “Freshkills Park Site History,” accessed April 2, 2018, https://www.nycgovparks.org/park-features/freshkills-park/about-the-site. 11 NYS DEC, “Index of Annual Reports Solid Waste Management Region 2.” 12 Vivian S. Toy, “Staten Island Leadership Sues to Close Fresh Kills,” New York Times, March 26, 1996, https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/26/nyregion/staten-islandleadership-sues-to-close-fresh-kills.html. 13 Priya Mulgaonkar and Jessica Quiason, “Clearing The Air: How Reforming the Commercial Waste Sector Can Address Air Quality Issues in Environmental Justice Communities” (Transform Don’t Trash NYC coalition, 2016). 14 New York, NY Fresh Kills Task Force, “Report of the Fresh Kills Task Force: A Plan to Phase Out the Fresh Kills Landfill” (State of New York, 1996). 15 NYC Mayor’s Office, “2001 and Beyond: A Proposed Plan for Replacing the Fresh Kills Landfill,” 1998. 16 Julie Sze, Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice, 125–26.

We Are Disposable

17 Julie Sze, 126–32. 18 NYC Department of Sanitation, “Lead Agency Findings Statement for the New York City Comprehensive Solid Waste Management Plan,” February 2006, 3–5. 19 DSNY Finance Division, “Report of the Finance Division on the Fiscal 2019 Preliminary Budget and the Fiscal 2018 Preliminary Mayor’s Management Report for the Department of Sanitation” (DSNY, March 14, 2018). 20 Priya Mulgaonkar and Jessica Quiason, “Clearing The Air: How Reforming the Commercial Waste Sector Can Address Air Quality Issues in Environmental Justice Communities,” 4–7. 21 US Census Bureau, “Selected Economic Characteristics : 2012-2016 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates,” American FactFinder, n.d., https://factfinder. census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_16_5YR_ DP03&src=pt. 22 Carl A. Zimring, Clean and White: A History of Environmental Racism in the United States. (New York: New York University Press, 2015). 23 Carl A. Zimring, 111–17. 24 Carl A. Zimring, 88–100. 25 Carl A. Zimring, 96. 26 Carolyn Merchant, “Shades of Darkness: Race and Environmental History,” Environmental History Vol. 8, no. No. 3 (2003): 380–94. 27 Julie Sze, Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice. 28 Ana I. Baptista, “Finding Hope at the Margins: A Journey of Environmental Justice,” 5–6. 29 Julie Sze, Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice, 112. 30 Ana I. Baptista, “Finding Hope at the Margins: A Journey of Environmental Justice,” 10. 31 Julie Sze, Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice, 41–44. 32 Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2017). 33 Julie Sze, Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice, 45. 34 NYC Department of City Planning, “ZoLa: New York City’s Zoning & Land Use Map,” accessed April 1, 2018, https://zola.planning.nyc.gov/. 35 Julie Sze, Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice, 45–46. 36 Julie Sze, 63-74,91-99. 37 Julie Sze, 84–88. 38 Julie Sze, 74–77. 39 Renu Garg et al., “Asthma Facts, Second Edition,” New York City Childhood

Exporting Accountability

Asthma Initiative (New York City: NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, May 2003), 7. 40 Transform Don’t Trash NYC and Justin Wood, NYLPI, “Dirty, Wasteful & Unsustainable: The Urgent Need to Reform New York City’s Commercial Waste System”; Priya Mulgaonkar and Jessica Quiason, “Clearing The Air: How Reforming the Commercial Waste Sector Can Address Air Quality Issues in Environmental Justice Communities.” 41 Priya Mulgaonkar and Jessica Quiason, “Clearing The Air: How Reforming the Commercial Waste Sector Can Address Air Quality Issues in Environmental Justice Communities,” 4–7. 42 Ana I. Baptista, “Finding Hope at the Margins: A Journey of Environmental Justice,” in Ecological and Social Healing: Multicultural Women’s Voices, ed. Jeanine M. Canty (New York, NY: Routledge, 2017), 2–3. 43 Julie Sze, Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice (Cambridge, Massachussetts.: MIT Press, 2007), 191–93. 44 Stephen T. Levin and Antonio Reynoso, “Reducing Permitted Capacity at Putrescible and Non-Putrescible Solid Waste Transfer Stations in Overburdened Districts.,” Intro No. 0495-2014 § (2017), http://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail. aspx?ID=1937616&GUID=2680B9A0-32EF-4B2F-BFD3-85D48111006F&Options=ID|Tex t|&Search=495. 45 Melissa Iachan, Priya Mulgaonkar, and Alex Moore, “Vote on Compromise Waste Equity Bill Blocked at Last-Minute by Queens Council Member” (New York Lawyers for Public Interest, December 18, 2017). 46 Brad S. Lander, “Fair Share - Reducing Overconcentration of City Facilties in Certain Community Districts,” Intro 1491 - 2017 § (n.d.), http://legistar.council. nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=2972248&GUID=3F07BDFA-C71F-4A20-B76A700ADAE544BA&FullText=1.

Exporting Accountability

CHAPTER 3 - ORGANIC WASTE IN NEW YORK CITY While Environmental Justice activists continue to fight environmental racism present in the siting of facilities and uneven exposure to environmental hazards, New York Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s municipal administration has made waste a major component of efforts to function more sustainably and combat climate change, implementing a system of organic waste diversion as part of the Zero by 2030 initiative. In America, recycling 100% of our organic waste nationally could keep 20 million metric tons out of the atmosphere, and recycling 100% of traditional material (paper, metal, glass, and plastic) waste as a nation could prevent as much as 300 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.1 With a greater greenhouse effect from modern materials, why should cities focus on organic waste? Urban waste management has had great success in designing systems of recycling organic, putrescible waste. Large scale use of food, yard, and human waste for agriculture has existed for many centuries, and compared to the relatively low recycling rates of modern materials in American cities, residents and municipalities have the best chance to achieve measurable results with organics. Waste expert Samantha MacBride proposes that the responsibility of city residents to manage their organic wastes is comparable to their residential activities as citizens: preparing food, using the toilet, and maintaining their yard are forms in which residents produce waste. Urban denizens lack the ability to forge steel, pelletize plastic, mill trees, or refine petroleum at home; the case she makes calls for strong extended producer responsibility that would hold businesses that produce products to be accountable for their waste, not only the disposal of their products, but the costs borne out by the extraction and production of those products on the greater ecosystem.2 Unfortunately, cities themselves often lack the power to enforce effective product bans; for example, New York Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s attempt to ban EPS (Expanded Polystyrene, the material that makes plastic forks and Styrofoam containers) has been impeded by heavy pressure from container lobbyists.3 What is required is strong state and federal regulations to hold industry accountable for their wastes. Simultaneously, by focusing on the management of organic wastes there is opportunity at the city and regional level for the design of systems that are ecologically sustainable and promote environmental justice. The density makes it a unique and powerful symbol of national trends. Public perception across the nation of New York City as a producer of waste creates a reference point, warning, or catalyst for action for other localities.

Organic Waste in New York City

In 2013, New York City Council passed Local Law 77, requiring the Department of Sanitation to implement pilot programs to collect organic waste from residents and schools. The law was intended to explore the feasibility for separating organic waste from the solid waste stream, where putrescible materials are mixed together with inert materials and sent to landfill or incineration.4 Yet putrescible material wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t always bagged and mixed together with non-organic materials, as it is today. Before discussing how organic waste could and should be collected and processed, it is important to understanding how organic material decomposes, and why it should be separated. In this chapter, I will discuss how organic material collection has changed, present methods of processing, and describe the benefits and challenges of systems that have emerged in NYC.

Figure 39. DSNY Curbside Organics Collection Expansion Map, Spring 2017. Buildings in Manhattan and South Bronx are by voluntary enrollment only.

Exporting Accountability

From Cholera to Community Gardens In natural ecosystems, organic waste decomposes without our intervention, assisted by microbes and other organisms. In the dense human environment of the urban ecosystem, the sheer scale and density of population makes mismanaged decomposition of certain types of organic waste â&#x20AC;&#x201C; most notably manure, animal carcasses, and human feces â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a serious threat to public health, breeding dangerous microbes in close quarters to humans. Fortunately for urban residents, sanitary engineers developed highly efficient methods of removing waste from public spaces, yet these wastes were dumped in less populous places, such as in marshlands, rivers, the ocean, or the slums of the urban poor.5 The fear of cholera long since gone from the daily concerns of New Yorkers, today the sheer amount of waste has grown rapidly; consumption patterns have greatly increased the amount of waste the United States produces. Although our population since 1960 has not yet doubled, the tonnage of waste in municipal waste streams as of 2012 is 3.5 times what it was in 1960.6 When managing waste, it is important to treat certain types of materials differently. Separating organic materials from other inert materials was once common practice in New York City. When municipal sanitation was in its infancy in New York in the 19th century, Colonel Waring required households to keep separate containers for garbage (organic, putrescible waste), rubbish (inert materials), and ashes for the department to collect. Source separation was a tactic for meeting two of his goals, both the efficient and speedy collection of waste materials from the streets, and the recycling of materials for the greatest economic gain. Waring designated the appropriate methods of collection and disposal based on the composition of waste.7 The Institute of Local Self-Reliance recommends composting at a local scale as a best practice, and it is this rubric that community composters in New York City seek to uphold.8 Still, there are many methods of processing organic waste at scale, and new technologies are still emerging. The two most prominent, cost-effective, and popular methods are composting and anaerobic digestion. These two methods have very different requirements, ability to scale, requirements of space and energy, and outputs. Anaerobic Digestion is a method of processing organic waste within an enclosed container where anaerobic microbes digest the material, producing solids and methane as byproducts. This technology is best used to process organic wastes with a certain moisture content, be they food waste containing milk and dairy, or human solid waste. The byproducts, methane and solids (or sludge, if processing raw sewage) can be used for

Organic Waste in New York City

fuel or fertilizer (respectively) if utilized properly and depending on the quality of inputs. Methane produced from anaerobic digestion is usually burned, where it becomes water vapor and carbon dioxide; this is seen as preferable to landfill because the burning of methane can generate electricity. As methane is a significantly more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide in the short term, releasing this methane into the atmosphere is a major contributor to climate change. Alternatively, the methane produced can heat homes or be burned for cooking or to fuel vehicles; it is already used as a substitute for fossil-fuel derived natural gas. In New York, the Newtown Creek WWTP processes sewage sludge through anaerobic digestion, and the resulting biosolids are sold as soil amendment or landfilled. Biosolids created through anaerobic digestion are of a much poorer nutritional quality than that created through composting; furthermore, there is already concern about industrial chemicals and prescription medicines that end up in city sewage. While biological dangers are neutralized through the high heat of anaerobic digestion, chemicals could remain and be added to the soil. While federal regulations were written for municipalities to be able to use their sludge as soil, the safety of using biosolids from sewage to grow food is suspect. Adding food scraps to anaerobic digestors that process sewage â&#x20AC;&#x201C; as New York City is currently piloting â&#x20AC;&#x201C; requires the consideration of these factors if the end product is to be used as soil amendment.

Figure 40. Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, Brooklyn with large anaerobic digestor eggs. Photo by Stefen Turner

Exporting Accountability

Figure 41. Compost windrow at Red Hook Community Farms.

Compost is the end product of human-assisted decomposition of organic matter. The etymology originates in the word decomposition itself, the process by which microbes, fungi, and animals break down and digest dead organic matter. An important part of the ecological cycle, decomposition takes all waste and dead matter and transforms it into nutrients available for other life. Earthworms eat decaying matter and produce soil for plants, which in turn feed other life forms. Every ecological system relies on decomposition. Composting creates ideal conditions for decomposition, and through human intervention manages the moisture, temperature, and ratio of decomposing materials to try and encourage microbes and other organisms to decompose organic waste quickly, and in a way that produces high nutrient soil free of dangerous microbes. Composting is a scientific process, an informed collaboration between humans and other organisms. It requires a basic knowledge of chemistry, observational methods, and at larger scales, a large amount of labor. Many industrial composting operations employ heavy machinery to mix up, or “turn”, the compost piles, a necessary step which manages the heat, moisture, and oxygen level. Today, organic waste – food scraps, yard trimmings, and soiled paper – constitutes approximately 31% of the residential waste stream in NYC9 and 35% of the

Organic Waste in New York City

commercial waste stream10. With all residential waste in 2016 totaling 3,196,200 tons, and commercial waste estimated at around 3.5 million tons, organic waste generated by New York City residents and businesses is over 2 million tons per year. When this waste is mixed with other refuse and brought to a landfill, rotting organic waste is trapped in an oxygen-deprived environment, where microbes digest the material and release large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Incineration of organic material releases the carbon stored in plant matter directly into the atmosphere, wasting the life-giving potential of organic material, while poisoning the lungs of nearby communities. Presently, 41% of the refuse NYC disposes of could be composted or anaerobically digested.11 It is clear that some blend of the two methods will benefit the region, helping wean New York off of fossil fuel-powered energy quickly and healing our contaminated soils. Letting the market determine the mixture is not ideal; as this thesis aims to illuminate, free market-driven policies externalize their costs onto the environment. This perspective is in alignment with city initiatives. Mayor de Blasio’s OneNYC plan lays out targets for curtailing organic waste to address the impacts on ecological degradation and extraction that recycling and reusing resources could avert, citing the adverse impacts that our industrial methods of waste collection and disposal have on local and global ecosystem health, including climate change; to this end, the report notes that “the collection, processing, disposal, and decomposition of New York City’s solid waste generates more than 2 million metric tons of CO2 each year”.12 Implementation of an organic waste collection and processing infrastructure in New York City is well underway through the Department of Sanitation, now collecting from 1 million of New York’s 8 million residents at home, and through laws requiring separation and recycling of organic waste by the largest commercial food businesses; Local Law 77 of 2013 mandates that large generators of food scraps in New York City must implement a system for recovering organic wastes. By requiring separation of organics, the city hopes to facilitate the development of new organics processing and recovery infrastructure. By requiring separation and recycling of food waste, it incentivizes businesses and systems to develop that meet that need, as they are guaranteed a certain amount of feedstock.13 This commercial landfill mandate, if fully implemented, is expected to divert over 250,000 tons of food waste. Using a 100-year time frame, this will mitigate about 400,000 tons of CO2; using a 20 year time frame - as methane has a much higher impact but the effects do not last as long – means that 250,000 tons of organic waste diverted will keep over 20 million tons of GHG in the next two decades.14 According to a Spring 2015 survey and research by Global Green USA documenting large-scale capacity of food waste processing infrastructure in a 100-mile radius of NYC – spanning New York State, New Jersey, and Connecticut – 105,000 tons of industrially

Exporting Accountability

sized food waste processing capacity from private services exists, while 512,750 TPY of food waste processing capacity is currently under development. All of these cited in the report use anaerobic digestion, or anaerobic digestion paired with composting. It is important to note that of these infrastructural developments, only one is within or close to the city, the DEP owned Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant. Of the other six facilities Global Green USA lists, two of them are approximately 100 miles away in Southington, Connecticut, one is on Long Island about 60 miles from New York, and the remaining plants are in Trenton, Elizabeth, and Gloucester City, New Jersey.15 As new regulations expand the market for organic waste, investment in capacity is increasing. Yet how do these policies integrate equity? Market-driven solutions favor those with the capital to make large investments, concentrating the profits from these systems. At a critical time in the development of policy and infrastructure, it is essential that organic waste processing in New York City consider the environmental justice impacts of the existing and new systems, lest the new policies and practices continue to reproduce the inequalities of exporting waste accountability inherent in a system of export and concentrated infrastructure. I believe that a distributed and decentralized system of community composting contains the seeds of a sustainable and equitable New York.

Community Composting in New York City Local Law 77 of 2013 also required DSNY to study the widespread practice of community composting throughout New York City. Prior to the organics collection pilot, DSNY has been supporting organizations that facilitate community composting. Their strategy for organic waste diversion is divided into three scales: at a citywide level, a community and neighborhood level, and at home. Community programs are focused on education and outreach, whereas city-wide collection focuses on large-scale processing. The NYC Compost Project (NYCCP) was established through the Department of Sanitation in 1993. NYC Compost Projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mission includes improving soil health through urban gardening and farming, habitat restoration, and stewarding street trees. It also serves as the leader in community outreach and engagement concerning composting in New York City.16 DSNY defines community composting as composting operations that exist outside of the home in public or publicly-accessible spaces. As noted below, their size and scope cover a wide spectrum, and their connection to the inhabitants of their neighborhood similarly diverse. Yet they all claim the urban space to build healthier neighborhoods and ecological citizenship. Long before the NYC Compost Project was established, community gardens and individuals were composting in New York City. Yet with the existence of the Compost Project, a formal public support network has allowed many community compost

Organic Waste in New York City

operations to be documented and supported. Local Law 77 of 2013 also required DSNY to conduct a study on how to improve community composting in New York City; of the hundreds of community composting operations in New York, the 2014 NYC Community Composting Report surveyed the 225 sites affiliated with the NYC Compost Project. Their size ranges from 10 square feet to 20,000 square feet (Red Hook Community Gardens). Located in gardens, parks, schools, farm, private properties, churches, and on rooftops, they use a variety of different composting methods and management models.17 These sites provide numerous environmental benefits and strengthen the ecological citizenship of New Yorkers. Community composting sites affiliated with DSNY have a three-fold mission. First, by caring for public green space, they improve nutrient-depleted and sometimes contaminated soils throughout the city. 71% of survey respondents used compost from organic waste to care for urban green spaces such as street trees and community gardens. Second, the majority of sites allow for residents to drop-off food scraps and provide opportunities for compost education. Lastly, organic waste processed in community composting sites recycles organic waste locally, without exporting organic waste to disposal or to distant facilities, adding greenhouse gases in the process.18 Adding compost to soil has numerous benefits to soil. It adds vital nutrients, supports a vibrant soil ecosystem that in turn supports plants, who form a symbiotic relationship with fungi, microorganisms, invertebrates, and beneficial bacteria. This abundance of life helps protect plants against disease and pests and increases the

Figure 42. Host sites and Community Gardens Affiliated with NYC Compost Project, 2012. Photo : DSNY.

Exporting Accountability

ability of plants to absorb nutrients. It also adds texture to absorb rainwater, better resists erosion, and makes it easier for roots to grow. It also neutralizes the pH level of the soil; this helps prevent plants from uptaking toxins, such as lead or other heavy metals, which are common in the post-industrial landscape of New York City. The alternatives to compost include synthetic fertilizers, derived from fossil fuels. Although it holds the basic chemical elements of soil, synthetic fertilizer does not add life to the soil, erodes faster, and requires the use of more pesticides to grow plants.19

Figure 43. Master Composter Zhenia N. chops food scraps, considered “greens”, before mixing in “browns” leaves, straw, wood shavings - and adding to compost bins at a Brooklyn Community Garden.

Composting generally requires inputs from two categories of organic waste: nitrogen-rich materials, such as food waste, which are usually moist materials and referred to colloquially as “greens”, and carbon-rich materials, which are usually dry materials such as leaves or wood chips, referred to often as “browns”. Having a proper ratio of these materials is essential to producing high quality compost and helps keep odors down as well. While food scraps are plentiful in New York City, many community composting groups find that sourcing enough carbon-rich materials, or browns like leaves, sawdust, straw, and wood shavings challenging.20 The ability to process certain types of organic waste depends greatly on the size and technology of composting methods and facilities. Most community composting sites in NYC compost plant-based organic materials such as fruit and vegetable scraps, plant trimmings, and leaves. While meat, processed foods, dairy, and bags or food containers listed as biodegradable can technically be composted, most small sites do not accept these materials, as they require extra effort or more intensive management. For instance, animal products increase odors and the threat of pests, and manufactured items such as compostable bags and silverware often require very high heat and long periods of time to break down.

Organic Waste in New York City

Most of the community composting sites are volunteer run, and some lack consistency in tracking the quality and amount of compost produced.21 Another interpretation is that instead of a focus on one metric – the quantity of waste processed – most composting organizations are deeply involved in integrated, holistic relationships with food and the community. As NYC community composting sites that are run by volunteer labor do not often prioritize collection and diversion statistics, it is unfortunate that support and funding are often distributed according to statistics and numerically articulated impacts.22 According to respondents from a 2013 Compost Project survey of composters in community gardens, one of the greatest challenges in expanding or starting a composting site is access to space. In a dense urban city, available land is often at a premium, and land for composting has not been a priority of city planning or private developers. Furthermore, the resources available to compost operations depend on the ownership of that land. For instance, operations on City-owned property have access to support from GreenThumb, a program managed by the NYC Parks Department that offers technical support, services, and grants to community gardens. Sites located on private property are not eligible for GreenThumb services.23 The connections between sanitation and parks in New York City is older than one would think; New York’s famed sanitation engineer Colonel Waring worked with Olmstead to design Central Park and other urban green spaces before founding the Department of Street Cleaning.24 Today, the NYC Compost Project regularly collaborates with the Parks Department, particularly with Greenthumb for education and outreach, but also with Park composting facilities. After all, urban spaces in New York require soil and compost for landscaping projects frequently. When East River Park received a Green Mountain EarthFlow – a large in-vessel system that uses a large auger to shift and grind material throughout the container – to help process park trimmings, they reached out to the Compost Project for moist, nitrogen-rich food scraps. Now, the park itself operates its own food scrap drop off sites. Additionally, most of the current waste processing sites for the NYC Compost Project, although started by small community groups, are on sites abandoned by NYC Parks Department, and therefore city-owned park land. While the city has been known to sell public land to private interests from time to time, such sites are significantly more protected from development than if they were tenants on privately-owned land. Here, the hierarchy of value on land determines what sites are deemed invaluable enough to powerful interests for community groups to begin composting on them.

Exporting Accountability

Lower East Side Ecology Center Such is the tale of the Lower East Side Ecology Center. Founded in 1987 in a community garden in the LES, it was one of the first organizations in modern-era New York to offer recycling and community-based composting. When a portion of the community garden was bought by a developer and turned into apartments, the composting operation took up residence on low-value, city-owned park land at the East River Park, composting underneath the Williamsburg Bridge. The LES Ecology Center still collects and processes food scraps into compost, but also provides classes and

DSNY

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Food Scrap Drop-Off Sites Throughout NYC

host

Major Partner (funding, directives)

NYC Compost funding Project

NYCCP Host Sites (BBG, NYBG, LES Ecology Center, etc)

host

local composting of food scraps

Greenmarkets manage

host Partner

NYC Parks (Greenthumb)

Master Composter training technical support

GrowNYC Community Gardens

Figure 44. NYC Compost Project: Partners , Food Waste Collection, and Processing

curriculum on a wide range of environmental topics, from aquatic ecosystems to soil health and renewable energy. In the early 2000s, the NYC Compost Project realized it had no host site in Manhattan; all the other boroughs hosted NYC Compost Project classes and initiatives through the institutional structure of their respective botanical gardens, and so DSNY approached and convinced the Ecology Center to become a host site. Having been composting since the early 1990s, the Ecology Center set many of the models currently used for food scrap collection sites throughout the city, beginning with the food scrap drop off in Union Square, which they still manage today. In 2013, in response to increased funding and directives from DSNY, the Compost Project began expanding compost drop-off sites, increasing opportunities for New Yorkers to drop off organic waste.25 (See Figure 44 above.)

Organic Waste in New York City

Now responsible for providing technical assistance and education to compost sites throughout Manhattan, the personal connections to community gardens in the Lower East Side have weakened, while increasing focus and resources within the organization on reaching communities outside of the historic range of their work – that is, Lower Manhattan – in favor of neighborhoods in Upper Manhattan. The limitations of one organization to serve a borough of almost 2 million people and over 13 miles long become apparent; at such a scale, local connections, requiring constant upkeep and communication on a neighborhood scale, risk being lost or significantly weakened. While the LES Ecology Center has been composting and keeping organic material local for decades, the NYC Compost Project’s involvement in processing is relatively recent and is seen as complementary to the Mayor’s initiative to send Zero Waste to Landfill by 2030. Heavily focused on diversion, directives from Sanitation are more interested in quantifiable statistics than community ties, and navigating how directives from the NYCCP might not match the goals of the host site can be difficult. For example, if Sanitation were to collect food scraps from LES Ecology Center drop-off sites and export them to processing facilities outside the city, it would conflict with the mission of the nonprofit to keep organics processing as local as possible. This stance supports environmental justice; by reducing the export of organic waste through transfer stations in low-income communities and communities of color, the Ecology Center is more closely aligned with the concept of borough waste equity, where responsibility for waste generated is maintained locally by the generators of that waste as much as possible. Another prime example of local processing – that trains young people of color – is the collaboration between the NYC Compost Project, Added Value at Red Hook Community Farms, and Green City Force.

Red Hook Community Farms and Added Value At 20,000 sq ft, the NYCCP operation in Red Hook at Added Value/Red Hook Community Farms is one of the city’s largest community composting operations. The importance of this facility is especially important within the historical context of Red Hook, a neighborhood that hosts large public housing developments and multiple waste transfer stations. Long a working-class neighborhood, in the late 19th and early to mid 20th century Red Hook was a bustling seaport with local dock workers and unionized longshoremen handling imports and exports. The model of NYC public housing was built in 1940s Red Hook, when the working-class community thrived. By the 1970s, government disinvestment had left the low-income, primarily people of color neighborhood neglected from city services. A combination of containerization and

Exporting Accountability

competition from Newark brought an end to the vibrant shipping industry in Brooklyn; while many jobs disappeared, the pollution of neighborhoods along the Brooklyn waterfront remained. Redlining and slum clearance policies prevented investment from preserving buildings, and urban renewal policies let the city take control of many of those dilapidated structures, which were then left unsold and undeveloped for decades. By the 1990s, 80% of the population of Red Hook lived in public housing projects and faced numerous municipal abuses from projects that the city began and abandoned, such as the construction of a new sewer that left a canal of open sewage flowing through the community. It is here that Environmental Justice Alliance leader Eddie Bautista grew up and first experienced the impacts of environmental racism. In response to decades of neglect and abuse, the neighborhoods of Red Hook and Sunset Pak fiercely resisted plans to build a sludge plant, citing the already large burden of environmental pollution and health impacts from the expressway and existing industry. Plans to build a large transfer station were thus met with a similar outcry.26 It is in this context and history that the residents of Red Hook created Added Value Farm on an abandoned NYC Parks baseball field as an educational farm for schoolchildren and to provide access to fresh vegetables that eventually grew to over 2 acres and became a host site for the NYC Compost Project.

Figure 45. Welcome sign at Red Hook Community Farm.

As the Brooklyn host for the NYC Compost Project, Brooklyn Botanical Gardens hosts most of its educational programs â&#x20AC;&#x201C; such as the Master Composter Class â&#x20AC;&#x201C; at the garden itself, and uses the site in Red Hook to manage the processing of food scraps

Organic Waste in New York City

and yard waste collected from a local drop-off site and Greenmarkets around Brooklyn. There, the operation produces almost 200 tons of organic compost per year, along with three main partner organizations: NY Cares, a large volunteer coordinating service that connects those willing to donate their time with organizations in need of labor, Green City Force, an AmeriCorps program working with NYCHA youth, and Added Value, the nonprofit that began using and stewarding the land for growing food and educating local schools about gardening and ecology. While the collection of food scraps comes from across Brooklyn, a large amount of it originates at the farm that the project resides on. In 2017, 2900 bags of compost and over 50 tons of loose compost were given away to neighborhood greening projects, including Street Block Associations for tree stewardship and flower gardens, community gardens for growing food and flowers, community centers for landscaping and food gardens, including Red Hook’s Miccio Community Center and Williamsburg’s Los Sures Community Center, Urban Farms like Green City Force Farms, East New York Farms!, Red Hook Community Farm, Youth Farm in Crown Heights, and Wyckoff Farm Museum, food pantries growing fresh food to supplement donated canned goods, including Red Hook’s Food First and the Bed Stuy Campaign Against Hunger, parks groups for the renovation of open green spaces around Brooklyn, including the Red Hook Conservancy and the Parks Department itself, and public schools for educational food gardens and landscaping.27

Figure 46. Tumblers keep rats and other pests out of fresh food scraps until they decompose enough to be added to windrows.

Exporting Accountability

Figure 47. Top Left and Bottom: A solar/wind powered ASP system (Aerated Static Pile) pumps air into windrows, accelerating aerobic decomposition; these piles need to be turned more often, as the center decomposes more quickly. Top Right: Aerobic microbes generate heat as they decompose food scraps, heating the pile enough to kill pathogens and seeds.

Organic Waste in New York City

The composting is done in large windrows, where 5 days a week a mixture of volunteers, BBG employees, and interns turn several tons of food waste and wood chips, mixing oxygen into the decomposing mounds. While the windrows are all turned by hand using shovels, some of the piles use a passive aeration system powered by solar panels and a wind turbine, accelerating the process. (See Figure 47 and 48)

Figure 48. A windrow at Red Hook Community Farms. The dark outline on the concrete is the former footprint; by shifting them regularly, it discourages rodents and keeps the pile aerated. Keeping the windrow in open space also discourages rodents; the late David Buckel, former Senior Organics Recovery Coordinator for Red Hook Community Farms and a fierce advocate for local, fossil-fuel free organic waste processing, was an expert in rodent control for urban composting.

Exporting Accountability

The volunteers come mostly from NY Cares, a volunteer organizing nonprofit and main partner of the Compost Project, and the interns are young NYCHA residents who are part of the Americorps program Green City Force, which offers green job training in agriculture, composting, and renewable energy. About 2,000 volunteers participate every year in aerating the windrows, making sure that the aerobic microbes that turn food waste into soil are not replaced with competing anaerobic microbes, organisms that digest food waste in environments without oxygen. Anaerobic digestion produces the powerful greenhouse gas methane and makes the compost smell downright offensive; aerobic decomposition, on the other hand, produces a strong but earthy smell, and yields a better, more reliable agricultural product with more nutrients. To be sold or used in agricultural markets, consistency is key. For all of these reasons, aerobic processes are widely regarded as preferable, although they can be significantly more labor intensive. For Red Hook Community Farms, that labor is seen as a benefit, rather than a cost. Involving more hand tools and physical work addresses the hidden costs of fossil-fuel machinery; the long-term costs associated with climate change, and the environmental justice benefits of processing waste locally without truck pollution or the indignity of concentrating facilities in one neighborhood. When asked about the sustainability of using volunteer labor, the Senior Organics Recovery Coordinator for the site David Buckel was quick to note that it has been successful for the past 9 years. NYC Compost Project itself is funded entirely by the Department of Sanitation, but with its other partners, is able to have a wide impact in multiple sectors; job training for low-income youth, rebuilding the soils around Brooklyn, and creating a more local cycle of food production that relies on far less fossil fuels and generates less greenhouse gases.28 How local is the waste stream that fuels the operation? Food Scraps and organic waste come to the site from many organizations both close to the site and all over Brooklyn. The NYC Compost Project operates commuter food scrap drop-off stations at subway stations, and also collects food scraps from GrowNYC greenmarkets, and the Park Slope Food Coop. A food scrap drop-off for neighbors and spent crops or weeds from the farm also form a sizable input, as well as mulch from the Parks Department and wood chips from local cabinetmakers to balance out the carbon to nitrogen ratio. The diversion is more difficult to calculate precisely than inert materials, as volume and weight vary considerably based on water content, and organic materials shrink when they decompose. Yet having produced at least 200 tons of compost in 2017, it is clear that this site diverted over 200 tons of organic waste from landfill or incineration. According to the Compost Project, BIG Reuseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s site processes far more food scraps, but the importance of the Red Hook site lies in its example of how to process organics without fossil fuels, and in a sustainable way that is achievable for low-income

Organic Waste in New York City

communities. As a labor-intensive method of organics processing, it provides exercise, teamwork, and a connection to the earth. Composting combines science – biology, chemistry, physics – with tactile, embodied forms of knowledge. The proper ratio of nitrogen to carbon, how much air is getting into the windrows, is something observed in person by sight, smell, and feel, with adjustments made in response to the conditions of the specific geography and fluctuations in weather and temperature. It is just as much a relationship as a knowledge, one that accumulates with experience. Yet lowincome communities may not need the institutional support of DSNY for their recycling of organic waste to be deemed sustainable; many traditions of relationship with land in low income and communities of color have been deeply nurturing, especially when sustenance comes from that land. Red Hook Community Farm challenges racial inequality with its labor force. The volunteer staff on the Saturday I first visited was primarily white, and as they had a Saturday off of work to devote to manual labor, I assumed they were probably not lowincome people. They outnumbered the interns greatly. In contrast, the majority of the workers that I saw on Thursday - interns from NYCHA’s Green City Force - were young people of color. This seems to mirror a common divide described in contemporary environmental movements, between people of privilege that participate because they feel it is morally right or provides a social good, in contrast with those from underserved communities seeking employment opportunities. Yet this shared labor can also be interpreted as a moment of collaboration between two groups that often do not work together. For the host site to function in its current configuration, all of the labor was necessary; compost windrows won’t turn themselves. This is not to discount the passion and intention with which the Green City Force interns and brought to their job; they understand the environmental value of their work, and many of them deeply enjoy working outside as part of a team. To participate in Green City Force, one must have a passion and interest for sustainability. Nor do I seek to discount the efforts of the primarily white volunteers; I myself was one of those volunteers that Saturday, and whatever motivation brought them to pick up a shovel and toss the steaming soil-tobe on the weekend, it was diverting hundreds of tons of food waste from landfill or incinerator. The more organic waste is diverted from export, the fewer trucks traveling to transfer stations fill low-income communities of color with indignity and asthmainducing diesel exhaust. The NYC Compost Project site is especially strong because of its connection to a farm. Composting is part of waste management, but it is also so much more than that; the cyclical nature of composting brings the nutrients back into the soil, to be made available for growing fresh, organic produce right next door. David Buckel described the connection of composting to agriculture as an incredibly powerful dynamic; when

Exporting Accountability

the processing of food waste into compost is then added to the soil from which more food is grown, we see the fruits of labor appear before our very eyes.29 For those of us who had never seen food growing as children â&#x20AC;&#x201C; myself included â&#x20AC;&#x201C; it is a moment of magic, a feeling of awe and gratitude at how sustenance is generated, placing us in our own history of existence as a species. It reminds me of how last year, as an adult, I first picked and ate an apple off of a tree and blueberries off of a bush. The cycles of the Earth, the complex web of life and our place within it, are given a meaning and a life of their own when we are allowed to engage in it, to participate at a level outside of the market, as all of our ancestors have for many thousands of years. Corey Blant, Education & Market Manager at Added Value Farms, sees the potential for the work of Added Value to grow and support a Food Justice movement. The power of Added Value Farms comes from being a small organization, rooted in neighborhood connections and the physical history of Red Hook, but a profound impact for the interns working seasonal and year-round internships is the connections his young staff-members make with Food Justice groups across the city. Through organizing, the work of growing food gains a relationship with a larger movement and places it within a cultural and historical context. Working with Added Value high school students age 14-18 and young adults aged 18-24 enrolled in Green City Force, young people of color participate in every aspect of the farm, learning viable and sustaining skills as they plant, build, weed, water, harvest, and process, not to mention running the farmstand, leading the CSA, and helping make donations to the local food pantry.30 Now, some graduates of the program work at BK ROT in Bushwick.

Figure 49. During winter at Added Value Farms, the fields lie fallow, but the compost operation never stops.

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MICROHAULING BK ROT lead composter Victor pulled up to the entrance to Know Waste Lands community garden on a well-loved mountain bike trailing a heavy cart with four large plastic tubs, each filled with food scraps from local businesses. Opening the gate, he pushed the load into the garden and after a moment to catch his breath, set to work organizing the space. With a quiet and patient demeanor, he unloads the scraps from each tub into the first bin, then with the help of the other turners – myself included today – he begins moving food scraps from bin to bin, aerating them in the process, and shifting one of the windrows a few feet down with the same intentionality. Composting at a community scale is heavily romanticized in the environmentalist zeitgeist of the twenty-first century, but it is a smelly and laborious task. BK ROT offers a realistic, hopeful, and critical perspective on an activity often green-washed. BK ROT is a composting and food-scrap hauling nonprofit in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Founded by Sandy Nurse and Renee Peperone, BK ROT employs local youth of color and handles the collection of food scraps by bicycle cart – known as micro-hauling – and sells or donates the finished product to community gardens and local soil projects. The organization’s mission prioritizes strengthening local economies, challenging environmental racism and gentrification, and centering youth of color. Hauling without fossil fuels, BK ROT cyclists take food scraps from local businesses – for a fee, as any waste hauler – to the garden, at the busy intersection of Dekalb and Myrtle in Bushwick, Brooklyn across the street from the elevated M train. The hypervisibility of the location is intentional, making their waste processing seen – and smelled – in a way that differentiates from the sounds and smells of diesel trucks and machinery receiving garbage in nearby solid waste transfer stations. In contrast, this doesn’t seem to be waste at all; the aptly titled Know Waste Lands invites us into a space that not only produces healing soil amendment, but an offering of shade and flowers. This urban respite grows and blooms in contrast to the trains passing overhead and the truck and bus traffic traveling down Myrtle Ave. Sandy founded BK ROT in the Fall of 2012, researching and testing out the idea of bicycle cart food scrap collection herself. In 2013, she launched a pilot with Renée Peperone. Both women were heavily involved in neighborhood organizations in Bushwick that were advocating for the creation of green space in a vacant lot owned by the Parks Department, but unused for 36 years. The site – like many others across the city – required the support of local politicians to be turned into a Greenthumb community garden. Meanwhile, the two women built their first compost bins at Bushwick Abbey, a local Episcopal Church. In 2013, they hired four youth workers and helped create El

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Garden, a community garden on Jefferson St in Bushwick. With the help of 596 Acres â&#x20AC;&#x201C; an advocacy organization based in Brooklyn that helps residents throughout the five boroughs identify and organize for underutilized spaces that could be community gardens, and then supports them in pressuring the city to dedicate resources to preserving those spaces for the public good through Greenthumb â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and the support of local councilmember Antonio Reynoso, the city established Know Waste Lands as a community garden in 2015. This allowed BK ROT to leave El Garden and build Know Waste Lands as it is today, both an ideal compost processing site and a permaculture wildlife garden, a lush and sunny space for neighbors to gather and sit on benches, replete with art, native grasses, wildflowers, and the seasonal visits of butterflies. In 2016, BK ROT moved all operations to Know Waste Lands. Today their staff has grown from one worker to five, and last year Renee stepped up to fill Sandyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s role as Chair of the Board, a volunteer position; both women still handle a variety of tasks to support their staff. Youth development and employment is at the core of BK ROT. Composting requires physical labor, scientific knowledge, teamwork, and constant hands-on problem-solving. By prioritizing the employment and knowledge building of young adults of color, BK ROT challenges the framework of mainstream environmentalism,

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where white voices and expertise are overwhelmingly represented. Because the scale is relatively small, odors and pests are easily kept to a minimum, and all workers are trained in every aspect of the system, becoming valuable experts with scientific knowledge. The Institute of Local Self-Reliance calculates that a composting facility creates 21.4 jobs for every $10 million invested, while landfill in comparison creates about 8.4 jobs/$10 million. BK Rot designs composting jobs that are safe, rewarding, and treat employees with respect.31 Many of the staff at BK ROT are graduates of the aforementioned Green City Force/NYC Compost Project training program at Red Hook Community Farms. As Renée astutely summarizes, BK ROT uses organic waste “to challenge race and class divisions that often show up when ecological stewardship is only open to people with the time and resources to volunteer their labor.”32 At BK ROT the workers are paid above minimum wage and decision making is shared democratically among the group. As noted before, questions of labor are largely excluded from conversations regarding sustainability; yet in order for a system to be sustainable, the people must be sustained. This perspective challenges the current paradigm of racial inequality present in mainstream environmentalism. I am myself embedded within this paradigm – my two years of volunteering with my own local community garden, where I regularly turn compost, would not have been possible without the flexible schedule and financial support of my graduate studies. Having left a physically demanding job for graduate school, my time with a shovel in hand serves my fitness, my community building, and my passion for ecology, not my income. While none of these attributes – fitness, community, ecological citizenship – are missing from BK ROT’s work, the commitment to centering the voice and power of young people of color is critical to the goals of environmental justice, and is too often left out of sustainability paradigms. What does challenging racism through youth of color led organizations look like? According to Co-Founder Renée Peperone, the mission includes “good green jobs for marginalized youth, locally-managed resource systems, and accessible green spaces for Brooklyn.”33 Aged 16-20, the youth collect scraps from local businesses, handle all customer interactions and billing, inform any designs and building of the project, and staff food scrap drop-off sites at two community gardens. Processing happens in stages: first, scraps are chopped and mixed with carbon-rich, woody materials such as wood shavings and mulch, then after several weeks the partially decomposed contents move to one of seven turning bins, where they are regularly aerated and turned until they are ready to be put into windrows. The windrows are turned weekly, and when ready are moved into a large curing mound. After curing in the sun, the compost can be sifted by hand or by a mechanical sifting barrel powered through the garden’s solar panels. The large, woody particles that take longer to decompose are returned to the beginning of

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the process to be mixed in with fresh food scraps. The labor is all shared by the team members, as are decisions about what work needs to be prioritized, building expertise and technical skills. The project is also contributing to soil health, which in Bushwick (as in other industrial neighborhoods) has a high level of lead. Brooklyn hosts almost half of the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s solid waste transfer stations, claims one of the highest asthma rates, and contains two Federal Superfund sites and numerous brownfields. The compost generated supports local community gardens that grow food, expanding the options for affordable organic vegetables, which must be grown in raised beds due to the heavy metals and chemicals

BK ROT Accounts Commercial Pickup ..................... Composting Site / Garden ...........

Figure 51. BK ROTS current processing sites and geographic distribution of commercial pickups. Map courtesy BK ROT.

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from past and present industry that contaminate the soil.34 In 2016, the Business Integrity Commission (BIC) – who manages commercial waste hauling licenses – implemented a pilot program to allow community composting organizations to collect and transport waste from commercial establishments, and because of this, BK ROT was able to expand and charge businesses for picking up food scraps. Commercial pick-ups are more efficient and cost-effective than residential pickups, especially for micro-haulers, and in BK ROT’s experience establishments are enthusiastic about managing their organic waste in a way that supports community. This, compounded with DSNY’s implementation of free curbside pickup for residents, persuaded BK ROT to end residential collection by bicycle, although denizens of the neighborhood can still drop off compost on Sunday mornings. BK ROT still faces many challenges. The “normal” challenges of running a nonprofit, such as overhead costs for infrastructure, paying staff, and equipment upgrades are combined with the specific limitations and requirements of operating a heavily regulated activity (processing putrescible material) in a small urban space. Access to water on site in the winter is limited; rain barrels can freeze in the winter and the city faucets are shut off to prevent pipes bursting. Permits, insurance, and pricing restrictions on waste are structured solely for waste haulers with large trucks; the New York State DEC charges waste haulers $5,000 for a two-year permit; at this time, microhaulers are not required to have one. Caps on the rate a waste hauler can charge for picking up food waste are set by the BIC, which for all organic waste haulers is $12.38/ 100 lbs, or about $208/ton. BK ROT’s bicycle haulers can pick up around 300 lbs. with four full totes, but most pickups are around 150 – 200 lbs, and BK ROT currently charges $20 per pick-up. Pick-ups are taken from 15 different establishments to Know Waste Lands and Myrtle Village Green to be processed. Residential drop-off is available in exchange for a monetary donation or for volunteering to do processing onsite that day, either chopping and mixing the fresh drop-offs with browns or sifting cured compost. Currently BK ROT is processing about 10,000 lbs per month (5 tons, or 60 tons per year) at Know Waste Lands and has the capacity to process 15,000 lbs per month. The target customers are businesses that do not produce enough organic waste to justify a waste hauling truck pick-up. In New York City, this includes offices, cafes, and many of the over 3 million small businesses. An overlooked obstacle faced by micro-haulers and local processors, particularly those operating out of community gardens – as defined by BK ROT – is the idea of being “cute”, that is being categorized with urban greening initiatives that exist primarily at the aesthetic level of city-making. Composting can be portrayed as a politically neutral, feel-good activity that teaches children and adults the benefits of environmentalism, an environmentalism that is quickly reduced to consumer activities such as picking up

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litter or buying hybrid cars and reusable water bottles. Community composting is not taken seriously or allocated resources by technocrats or other ‘experts’. For instance, the Department of Sanitation budget allocates about $383 million for waste export costs to companies outside the city (this does not include the collection of waste locally), while the budget for community composting is a paltry $3.5 million; most of this goes to pay 40 staff members at NYCCP sites. While the budget for the Bureau of Recycling and Sustainability has doubled over the last two years, the compost project budget has declined significantly. Overall, the “community” composting label impedes integration and coordination with the commercial waste hauling sector, DSNY, and city planning. Yet according to tests performed by the Urban Soils Institute, the final product from BK ROT is one of the best qualities in New York. There are other micro-haulers in New York City working with community gardens to process waste, such as Reclaimed Organics in the Lower East Side. As a for-benefit start-up, they partner with Common Ground Compost to offer consulting services for businesses looking to make more sustainable operations. Reclaimed Organics also collects food scraps by bicycle cart, and processes with the Bokashi method and a smaller Aerated Static Pile system than Red Hook Community Farms or BK ROT, in two bins at East Side Outside, a community garden on land jointly owned by Parks and Education; adjacent to East Side Middle and High School, an agreement with the school facilitates a food justice curriculum for students. As a woman-owned business, they see the need for more M/WBE representation in the waste industry, but are willing to work with waste haulers to make sure micro-haulers have a place in the system. This arrangement can benefit commercial waste haulers, by expanding their markets to include businesses that produce very small amounts of food waste and are not costeffective to collect via truck. Under this system, micro-haulers would collect food scraps from small businesses and office buildings by bicycle, and consolidate the organic waste at a pick-up location for organic waste haulers. With plethora small shops and offices in the architecturally dense urban environment of New York City, there is a large demand for micro-hauling, and Reclaimed Organics aims to reduce the number of trucks on the street and diverted as much organic waste from landfill as possible.35 While this model would be very successful in increasing diversion, it relies on a system of waste export; as long as that export system places the burden on communities of color as it does now, organic diversion will perpetuate environmental racism.

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Figure 52. Top: At East Side Outside, food scraps ferment via the Bokashi method for two weeks before being added to bins. Middle and Bottom Left: Reclaimed Organicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bicycle Trailer is used for Microhauling in Lower Manhattan. Bottom Right: After sitting in Bokashi tubs, food scraps break down in ASP Compost Bins for another 5-7 weeks.

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INSIGHTS It is commendable that New York City has taken on the diversion of organic material from the waste stream and established an ambitious target; for instance, all of Staten Islandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s residential organic waste is being processed into compost on Staten Island, keeping nutrients and jobs local. As processing capacity increases regionally, the city must do all it can to promote local processing. Relying on private investment to meet the needs of city operations is not ideal, as it allows large waste hauling and disposal companies to further profit off of city residents and the nutrient flows we participate in. The examples of local organics processing without fossil fuels demonstrated by the New York City Compost Project, at both the Lower East Side Ecology Center and Red Hook Community Farms, and by BK ROT is a powerful example of the systems the city must cultivate and support to avoid enforcing environmental racism in the name of sustainability. By supporting micro-hauling and local or regional organic waste systems that center racial equity and include community members in planning and siting practices, New York City can combat climate change, improve soil health, and enforce a civil society that truly values all people equally.

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Figure 53. Victor, Compost Operations Expert and BK ROTâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first employee. Photo courtesy BK ROT.

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Endnotes 1 Samantha MacBride, Recycling Reconsidered: The Present Failure and Future Promise of Environmental Action in the United States, Urban and Industrial Environments (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2012), 207. 2 Samantha MacBride, Recycling Reconsidered: The Present Failure and Future Promise of Environmental Action in the United States. 3 Janet Babin, “New York City Reinstates Styrofoam Ban,” WNYC News, May 12, 2017, https://www.wnyc.org/story/new-york-city-reinstates-styrofoam-ban/. 4 DSNY, “2014 NYC Community Composting Report,” January 2015, 4. 5 Martin V. Melosi, Garbage in the Cities: Refuse Reform and the Environment (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014), 50–59. 6 US EPA, “‘Table 1: Material Generated in the Municipal Waste Stream, 1960 to 2012’, Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Tables and Figures for 2012.,” February 2014, 3. 7 Martin V. Melosi, Garbage in the Cities: Refuse Reform and the Environment, 57. 8 Institute for Local Self-Reliance and Highfield Center for Composting, “Growing Local Fertility: A Guide to Community Composting” (Hardwick, VT, April 2014). 9 DSNY, “2013 NYC Curbside Waste Characterization Study,” 2013, 8. 10 DSNY, “New York City Commercial Solid Waste Study and Analysis, 2012 : Summary Report,” 2012, 39. 11 Samantha MacBride, “NYSAR New York State Organics Conference” (Poughkeepsie Grand Hotel, March 27, 2018). 12 NYC Mayor’s Office, “OneNYC Progress Report 2017,” April 2017, 138. 13 Matt de la Houssaye, Sharon Avnon, “Regional Food Waste Recovery Outlook, 2015-2016,” Global Green’s Food Waste Recovery Series (Global Green USA, 2016), 2. 14 Matt de la Houssaye, Sharon Avnon, 4. 15 Matt de la Houssaye, Sharon Avnon, 5–7. 16 DSNY, “2014 NYC Community Composting Report,” 5–6. 17 DSNY, 6–7. 18 DSNY, 11. 19 DSNY, 8. 20 DSNY, 14. 21 DSNY, 12. 22 DSNY, 13. 23 DSNY, 12. 24 Martin V. Melosi, Garbage in the Cities: Refuse Reform and the Environment, 44–45. 25 Renee Crowley, Interview with NYC Compost Project Manager at LES Ecology Center, In-Person, February 16, 2018. 26 Julie Sze, Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environ-

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mental Justice (Cambridge, Massachussetts.: MIT Press, 2007), 128–30. 27 David Buckel, Interviews with NYC Compost Project at Red Hook Community Farms, In-Person, March 1, 2018. 28 David Buckel. 29 David Buckel. 30 Corey Blant, Phone Interview with Added Value Farms, March 2, 2018. 31 Guy Schaffer, “Building Community Composting in Bushwick, Brooklyn,” Biocycle Vol 58, no. No 3 (April 2017): 46. 32 Megan Mendenhall and Renée Peperone, “Bushwick’s Local Youth Enriched by Composting Project,” RSF Social Finance (blog), January 7, 2016, http://rsfsocialfinance.org/2016/01/07/bushwicks-black-brown-youth-enriched-by-composting-project/. 33 Megan Mendenhall and Renée Peperone. 34 Sandy Nurse, “‘Community Composting’ NYSAR New York State Organics Conference” (Poughkeepsie Grand Hotel, March 27, 2018). 35 Meredith Danberg-Ficarelli, Reclaimed Organics Site Visit, April 23, 2018.

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A Just Regional Waste System

CHAPTER 4 - A JUST REGIONAL WASTE SYSTEM A regional waste system that does not externalize accountability for its waste can start with the local processing of organics, as that is the stream of municipal solid waste with the least toxicity and the material cities and everyday people are best equipped to process. At one-third of MSW by ton, it is also a significant portion of the municipal waste stream, with the potential for quantifiable benefits. I will examine the spatial and regulatory requirements of a local waste processing system, and how it might fit into a regional waste system that supports environmental justice and confronts discrimination against class and race. The new commercial waste zoning system that environmental justice activists have called for will hopefully reduce the concentration of truck traffic in low-income communities, but without the implementation of regulations such as Intro 157 that would limit the amount of transfer stations in any one district, waste – including organics – will continue to be exported through only a few communities. Keeping organic waste local will support urban and regional agriculture. This flow of nutrients, from food, to organic waste, to compost, to soil used to grow food takes design cues from the cycles of nature. In fact, the flow itself is a manifestation of nature itself, not separate but deeply embedded within it. Nature is not an outside force, in conflict with human activities; we are borne of and live within the circular flows of growth and decomposition on Earth and in the universe at large: from stardust to stardust. A finite Earth offers limits to exponential extraction. The warning of Donella Meadows, that there are “Limits to Growth” has inspired support for the concept of a circular economy, growing in popularity among sustainability professionals and business leaders alike. The idea of creating material systems that take in discards and create new products in an endless cycle, under capitalism, seems appealing to business leaders attempting to stabilize profits and have a beneficial relationship with environmental systems. Compost is one component in what some circular economy experts describe as the “biocycle”.1 In this chapter I will delve into the possibilities and limitations of approaching soil and food systems as a circular economy, noting that before the widespread use of petrochemicals, humans used these very types of flows to create and maintain life. We must understand the difference and delineate between industrial manufacturing systems and systems of human sustenance when discussing circular economies.

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“Local as possible is still best even if there’s no choice but to centralize some of the rest. That does not mean we choose large or small. That means we work hard to develop as much capacity as we can on the neighborhood or community level, and then, for the remaining organics left to manage, we welcome and are grateful for key partners in organics recovery, such as environmentally responsible municipal curbside pickup programs, commercial haulers, and large-scale organics recyclers.” – David Buckel, Red Hook Community Farm, Brooklyn, NY (BioCycle, June 27th, 2013)5

As Local As Possible - Insights and Speculations A local processing system would need to consider how much tonnage is produced in each neighborhood in order to process as much of that tonnage as possible. Underrepresented communities should have the power to decide how much waste they allow to be processed within their boundaries, and well-resourced communities should be held more accountable for the waste they produce. Using the model pioneered by Red Hook Community Farms and BK ROT, it is possible to process at least 200 tons of organic waste per year on one acre of land. If New York produces about 6 million tons of municipal solid waste per year, and a third is organic waste, the city would need capacity for 2 million tons of organic waste; this would require about 10,000 acres to process, or 15.625 square miles. As New York City in its entirety is about 303.31 square miles, you would need approximately 5% of the total land area of New York City. Naturally, this would look differently for each borough and each neighborhood depending on the density of residents and current land use patterns; for instance, some parts of Manhattan might struggle to find enough land, but – if the plans to close the notorious prison move forward – Rikers Island, at 413 acres, could process almost 4% of the city’s waste. The North Bronx hosts more green space of any other borough, yet all of the borough’s waste is processed through transfer stations in the South Bronx. Current composting initiatives in NYC have begun on underutilized park land; a thorough study of city owned land could make some conclusions on what is currently available. For instance, a few blocks from Added Value Farms lies a well-maintained baseball field, yet nearby there is another decrepit baseball field waiting for seeds to be sown. Brownfields abound in industrial areas within New York City; producing compost on brownfields in order to remediate them would save the cost of trucking in soil. One of the most promising organizations that identifies vacant land for community benefit is 596 Acres, who were instrumental in making sure the site used by BK ROT, Know Waste Lands, was purchased by the Parks Department under the Greenthumb

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program. 596 Acres developed an online tool called â&#x20AC;&#x153;Living Lotsâ&#x20AC;? that makes city GIS data available to the public with a tool for neighbors to organize and find each other in order to turn vacant lots into community gardens. They also support garden groups petitioning the city to become a Greenthumb garden and pressuring representatives when necessary and have organized campaigns to fight tax lien sales and identify underutilized city-owned buildings. While GIS maps and on-the-ground surveying can show underutilized park land or vacant lots, potential sites for urban agriculture, gardens, and local composting, land use decisions must be approved by community residents. Planning practices should always prioritize the needs of all members of a community, and those needs are best known by the residents of that community; parks and gardens are often welcome additions to neighborhoods, which can host composting sites. Unfortunately, the increase in privatization of public services and high market rates for housing have made access to land difficult in New York City today. Regardless, approaching a community board and proposing a waste processing site is a sure-fire way to mount opposition in any district. Yet we cannot afford not to do so; allowing well-resourced communities to keep out composting under the present system keeps the burden on neighborhoods already overburdened. Fortunately, a distributed processing system can complement the collection districts the Department of Sanitation already uses, and work in tandem with the commercial waste zoning system the city is currently developing. Commercial waste zoning is intended to grant large waste companies contracts to haul commercial waste, including organic waste. Prioritizing local organics microhaulers can lessen the impacts of diesel waste trucks; micro-hauling and processing should be given special consideration and city support. The city already has precedent in supporting and prioritizing minority and women owned businesses (M/WBE). By licensing and subsidizing small carting industries such as BK ROT that are minority or women owned, not only is a new and more accountable system of managing waste possible, but the Department of Sanitation can have an impact in areas that benefit other agencies. While the narrow scope of city agencies often prevents holistic design and planning, nimble and small environmental justice organizations embedded in their communities are well-versed in generating such practices, with deeply responsive feedback loops that can adapt to the specific circumstances of each neighborhood. Furthermore, incentives and legal frameworks that empower organizations such as BK ROT feed urban agriculture initiatives, connecting and supporting food justice and health for low-income communities. Arcadis and Public Works Partners were contracted by DSNY to develop a Commercial Waste Zoning System study. This study was based solely on data reported to the BIC from commercial haulers, proposing a number of geographic zones in each

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borough, and a number of available waste hauling contracts in each zone. The report will likely model a variety of scenarios, with different size and number of zones and number of available contracts. The intention of the report is to reduce one number: overall Vehicle Miles Traveled. In a sense, this system will be very similar to the one that existed before the BIC was created, although with more oversight and price regulation from the BIC (and less organized crime – depending on your feelings about private ownership of public utilities). Hopefully, the provisions will utilize strict requirements and high percentages of M/WBE (minority / women owned business enterprise) stipulations within those contracts and allow for what some might call “alternative collection systems” – such as micro-haulers – that diverge from the single model of truck-based waste hauling the study focuses on. Ideally, under the new system micro-haulers would not be tied to specific commercial haulers and could operate in multiple commercial waste zones. The range of micro-haulers and the distribution of micro-hauling routes is formed by very different criteria than diesel-powered truck-based haulers, with no emissions or noise, less risk of pedestrian collisions or property damage, more maneuverability in the dense urban environment, and flexible parking and access. The limited capacity of hauling also keeps the range of micro-haulers within a certain range of their collection point; micro-haulers based in Brooklyn won’t be dumping organic waste in the Bronx. In fact, without harmful emissions from operations there is no reason to limit the number of micro-haulers in the city whatsoever.

Figure 54. Reclaimed Organics pick-up range for bicycle micro-hauling.

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The city has still not opened all of the facilities called for in the 2006 SWMP, and transfer stations are still concentrated in low income communities of color in the outer boroughs, with the accompanying health impacts and offenses to human dignity unresolved. Micro-haulers that work with local processing â&#x20AC;&#x201C; especially those who are M/WBE â&#x20AC;&#x201C; are a viable methodology to radically reduce the amount of waste currently processed through a system of export and would reduce the burden externalized onto low-income people and communities of color. These alternatives to truck collection and long-distance export prioritize the well-being, safety, and prosperity of working people. The city and state, through effective policy requiring or subsidizing the use of compost generated by local MWBEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s , could creating a demand for locally produced compost for urban agriculture, healing soils, and remediating the many brownfields of the city, in addition to urban landscaping for transportation that serves the needs of a New York living in an era of anthropogenic climate change and sea-level rise. Effective policy would set different BIC-regulated rates for micro-haulers; as BK ROT is a force combatting climate change and enforcing principles of fair share, their use should be encouraged or even subsidized. All of these opportunities must include community planning for all siting and land-use, especially where decisions have historically been made without the consent, approval, or notification of the residents. Local processing of organic waste serves the blooming of a regional nutrient cycle that combats climate change and increases ecological citizenship to urban residents. Through a highly visible infrastructure that confronts the out-of-sight, out-of-mind system that externalizes the costs of waste, building local community ties through soil making can fortify and nourish the social bonds that make neighborhoods safe and thriving; yet without giving under-resourced people a voice in planning urban space, such feel-good activities can easily become ripe material for green-washing and gentrification or a placation that permits an unequal concentration of burden to persist. Although New York City laws and regulations have immediate jurisdiction within municipal boundaries, the effects of those laws and regulations have regional consequences. Likewise, the food needed to support our city cannot all be grown in the space allotted to us with current forms of land use. Rapidly expanding urban agriculture is essential to addressing food justice issues such as the availability and affordability of fresh vegetables in low-income communities. Yet even supporting the necessary expansion of local food production, the primary source of agriculture for our region in the foreseeable future will come from outside the dense urban fabric of New York City. Reports on the progress of the 2006 SWMP claim that the infrastructure established for solid waste export could become obsolete if recycling of organic waste and other recyclables improves, and that if these Zero Waste goals are reached, some

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existing infrastructure would have to be repurposed for the export of organics or inert recyclable materials.2 This future is not only possible – it should be the intended future that the city strives for. Achieving zero waste will make waste disposal obsolete, after all. I envision that this infrastructure could be repurposed to transport soil amendment generated within the city through composting or anaerobic digestion to agricultural fields, returning the nutrients taken from farmland to the soil, forming a regenerative regional system. As a last resort, food waste could be safely shredded and dehydrated at these marine transfer stations, and barges could bring the food scraps to rail transport that brings these scraps to regional farms, although this system will probably rely on fossil fuels. Visionary imagination and creativity are essential to creating the blueprints of this system, and for challenging those who call the fiscal costs prohibitive; the costs of new systems always require investment, investment guided by the belief that what we do as a society is the best practice for the long term. Some of the benefits of such a system will be economic, but I believe these to be outweighed by other benefits: a just distribution of responsibility, regional collaboration, and the long-term viability of our regional inhabitation. Of course, this system must prioritize equity and human dignity; that is a future we can be proud of.

Compost, Zero-Waste, and the Circular Economy

With twelve years left to reach “Zero Waste” – removing the irresponsible loophole of “to-Landfill” – New York City must move boldly, intelligently, and above all, fairly. There can be no truly sustainable New York City with an economy rooted in unjust labor and land use practices. Zero waste approaches must not only look at the end product of the economy, but at the economy as a whole; where copious consumption and extraction are permitted, and a strategy that proselytizes market domination reigns, we will continue to scramble for solutions to contain our waste until the ecological systems that make present levels of consumption possible collapse. Siting of transfer stations and disposal networks alone will not reduce the flow of wasted materials; in the long term we must strive to reduce packaging and consumption and fundamentally change the model of our extractive economy, one steeped in subsidized petroleum that defines success as endless growth on a planet with finite resources. This will require strong extended producer responsibility for the companies that produce the materials and products that are wasted. A zero waste New York City might implement principles of a circular economy, where materials are used to their utmost potential, over and over again. This mimics the transformations of organic matter and life in ecosystems, where each life form takes nutrients and energy from the system and returns them to the system through waste.

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Yet that waste is always a material for another actor in the ecosystem. The carbon dioxide we breathe out is taken in by trees and other plants, which in turn breathe out the oxygen that fuels us. Excrement and decomposing life fertilizes the soil for others. The Earth is an unfathomably complex closed loop system, save for the solar energy we receive from the sun; yet by participating in it, by transforming materials around us in a particularly destructive and reductive way, we are upsetting an ideal balance of life-sustaining conditions. Nature, the system we and our cities are completely enmeshed in, is a powerfully efficient arrangement in that what is produced is useful for others. This is not to say that there is not beauty or excess; William McDonough and Michael Braungart, in their book on circular design principles Cradle-to-Cradle, use the example of the blossoming cherry tree to illustrate how beauty and excess can operate in ecological limits and effortlessly share energy and nutrients with other lifeforms.3 Howard T. Odum’s ecological systems modeling is now being applied to industrial systems of production, invoking the ideas of a “Circular Economy” that mimics the lifecycle of organic life-forms, equating the production and recycling of goods to birth, death, and decomposition. There are some small differences to traditional recycling, which treats waste material as commodity and reuses only what the market deems valuable. The concept of the Circular Economy being promoted currently by industry and government leaders emphasizes not only product, component, and material reuse, but prioritizes repair and refurbishment over remanufacture and utilizing renewable

Figure 55. Circular Economy Hierarchy of Flows. J. Korhonen et al. / Ecological Economics 143 (2018) 37–46

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energy at every part of a product’s life cycle. The goal of this business and policy-driven CE is that “the product value chain and life cycle retain the highest possible value and quality as long as possible and is also as energy efficient as it can be.”4 This logic is counterintuitive to an economy that demands firms maintain an ever-increasing market share by reducing financial costs, as capitalism demands; reducing financial costs will always externalize those costs onto the ecosystem, workers, and those not deemed as valuable. Like matter and energy, costs never disappear; they must go somewhere. For instance, combustion (such as WTE) of bio-mass – mulch from dead trees, for instance – for energy reduces the need for fossil fuels, but the energy generated is low compared to the energy required to grow the tree, and using the resulting ash for fertilizer is difficult because of toxic concentrations of cadmium; anaerobic digestion produces less toxic soil amendment while producing methane that can be burned for energy, but the methane burning produces carbon dioxide, and the digestate left over is not as nutrient rich as composted organic waste. Add modern materials like packaging to the WTE combustion process or urban sewage with modern chemicals into the anaerobic digestion process (such as in Newtown Creek, Brooklyn) and the resulting products are hazardous waste rather than valuable, nutrient rich soil additives.

Figure 56. DSNY’s Hamilton Avenue Marine Transfer Station where waste is containerized and exported via barge. Circular Economies require the workers, energy and infrastructure to facilitate the flow of goods.

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Kornohen et al arrive at this scientific definition :

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Circular economy is an economy constructed from societal productionconsumption systems that maximizes the service produced from the linear nature-society-nature material and energy throughput flow. This is done by using cyclical materials flows, renewable energy sources and cascading type energy flows. Successful circular economy contributes to all the three dimensions of sustainable development. Circular economy limits the throughput flow to a level that nature tolerates and utilizes ecosystem cycles in economic cycles by respecting their natural reproduction rates.â&#x20AC;?6

Figure 57. Circular Economy Diagram. Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

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Can organics flows in New York City form a circular “biocycle” economy? Can a circular “biocycle” of organic nutrients flows lead the way to a sustainable New York City? Will it provide a more equitable future? As an exercise, I created these diagrams to attempt to visualize these cycles. While the diagrams on these page illustrate how

Residential Organics Flow : Food - Waste - Soil 5. Trucks bring produce to food distribution hubs. From there produce is trucked to stores, restaurants, and markets

1. Waste is picked up from DSNY brown bins curbside 2. DSNY trucks bring organic waste to transfer stations

Waste Hauler

Food Distributors

Residents

Emissions and Fossil Fuels Few Local Jobs

Transfer Station

Regional Agriculture

4. Finished compost is sold for farming and landscaping

Processing Facility

3. Food scraps and yard waste are trucked to composting facilities outside the city

Plastic bags and contaminated waste are sorted out and sent to landfill

Figure 58-61. (4 pages) Organic Material Flows, looking at present and emerging models and what locations and externalities might arise.

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organic materials can â&#x20AC;&#x153;flowâ&#x20AC;?, the abstraction of diagramming obscures the specific geographies and externalized costs of the system. Utilizing current methods of collection and export, fossil fuels and localized pollution remain, and the geographic distribution of facilities and labor may continue to reproduce the inequalities documented in this

Commercial Organics Flow : Food - Waste - Soil Businesses

Businesses contract with a waste hauler to pick up waste curbside in bags or totes

Food Distributors

Waste Hauler

Emissions and Fossil Fuels Few Local Jobs

Transfer Station

Regional Agriculture

Processing Facility Where are facilities located? How do prices, regulations, and historical patterns impact where facilities are concentrated? How is the system dependent on fossil fuels? Is ownership and profit shared equitably? Who suffers from the burdens of the system?

Plastic bags and contaminated waste are sorted out and sent to landfill

High contamination from truck-based hauling.

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thesis. At 34.1 fatal injuries per 100,000 workers, waste and recylables hauling is the fifth most dangerous occupation in the United States.7 Legislation that caps the number of trucks flowing into each community will distribute the burden, but local collection and processing without trucks will also make organics collection safer for workers and city residents.

Organic Materials Workers Thanks to labor organizing, minimum wage in NYC for food service workers increased to $12/hr in 2018

The Hunts Point Produce Market supplies over half of the Tri-State Areaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s produce

Waste Hauler

Food Distributors Businesses Waste hauling is one of the most dangerous jobs in the United States; long hours and exposure to diesel pollution add to negative health impacts*

Regional Agriculture

Many farmworkers in New York State are migrants and do not qualify for work protections or overtime pay

Transfer Station

Processing Facility

*In NYC, there have been 33 deaths attributed to commercial waste trucks since 2010.

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Despite technology investments, human labor is the most reliable for sorting organic waste, which increases compost quality

A Just Regional Waste System

Micro-hauling & Local Composting commercial haulers

outside agriculture

1. FOOD SCRAPS collected by bicycle carters

INCREASES ACCESS TO AFFORDABLE HEALTHY FOOD

ELIMINATES TRUCK POLLUTION

soil soil

PROVIDES LOCAL JOBS

3. COMPOST distributed for street trees and soil, urban agriculture, and community gardens

HEALS CONTAMINATED SOIL

2. FOOD SCRAPS processed at community gardens and local processing sites

MORE PUBLIC SPACES STRENGTHEN COMMUNITY TIES

One must use caution with simple diagrams; ecological systems are incredibly complex webs of interdependent relationships. How an economy structured around private property and currencies without absolute value can compare to the web of life remains to be seen; we should remember that it took over 1 Billion years for the latter to work out many of the kinks. We should also remember that our own economy is deeply embedded within that web of life, and that our “kinks” in the process may devastate other members of the living community, if not ourselves.

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Insights While advocates of Circular Economy principles use scientific and pseudoscientific concepts borrowed from ecological modeling as metaphors to make industrial processes seem less extractive, subsistence-based economies practiced by indigenous people have long returned the nutrients gathered from biomass to the surrounding ecosystem in a circular and regenerative manner, sharing nutrients and excess gathered from biomass – such as crops – to the surrounding ecosystem. In economies without petrochemicals, nutrient cycles are inherently circular, as they do not rely on the inputs of fossil-fuel derived fertilizers, and the “products manufactured” (grown) are all returned to the ecosystem. Composting fits well into Kornohen et al’s scientific definition of the Circular Economy because it is already an ecological process – decomposition with an added contribution from human management – that does not require fossil fuels for manufacture or remanufacture, and as demonstrated by BK ROT, Reclaimed Organics, and the NYC Compost Project site in Red Hook, can run entirely on renewable energy. Furthermore, composting that centers the leadership of marginalized people – youth of color, working people, and immigrants – respects the dignity and uplifts the most important renewable resource of all: ourselves. Workers and labor are often conspicuously missing from diagrams concerning the circular economy. Diagrams mimic the water cycle, with evaporation, condensation, and precipitation flowing effortlessly from the heat and energy generated by the sun and the motion of the Earth, yet these efforts take work. While I use the word “flow” to describe the movement of materials, the inevitability of this word carries a connotation of a river being drawn by gravity, as ubiquitous and natural as the laws of physics. Our economy is not an inevitable paradigm, but one that requires the coordinated efforts and enforcement of humans around the globe. As stated before, waste is an active valuation by humans, and subject to the edicts of our society. Instead of externalizing the costs as in our industrial economy, composting food waste into soil amendment for urban agriculture is an ecological system that brings nutrients back to the soil in order to grow food. If managed on a local scale in an equitable fashion, with the consent and under the control of residents, it can be something approaching a true circular economy, reducing the harmful externalities of our present system. I finish with this because if it is possible to change this inequitable relationship to one another and to the ecological systems we inhabit, we must. It is possible. And we must.

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Figure 62. Greenhouse at East Side Outside Community Garden.

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Endnotes 1 Ellen MacArthur Foundation, “Urban Biocycles,” March 2017. 2 Daniel Huber, “Ten Years After: Assessing Progress on the City’s Solid Waste Management Plan” (New York City: NYC Independent Budget Office, August 2017), http://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/ten-years-after-assessing-progress-on-thecitys-solid-waste-management-plan-2017.pdf. 3 Michael Braungart and William McDonough, Cradle-to-Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002). 4 Jouni Kornohen, Antero Honkasalo, and Jyri Seppälä, “Circular Economy: The Concept and Its Limitations,” Ecological Economics 143, no. January 2018 (n.d.): 38, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.06.041. 5 Institute for Local Self-Reliance and Highfield Center for Composting, “Growing Local Fertility: A Guide to Community Composting” (Hardwick, VT, April 2014), 9. 6 Jouni Kornohen, Antero Honkasalo, and Jyri Seppälä, 39. 7 Bureau of Labor Statistics, “National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries in 2016” (US Department of Labor, December 19, 2017), 3.

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CONCLUSION According to the DSNY’s 2019 proposed network of long-term export contracts (see Figure 63 on next page), Manhattan’s municipal waste will be transported by truck to be burned in Newark’s incinerator, brought to transfer stations in New Jersey where long-haul trucks will bring the waste to landfills in Pennsylvania, or trucked through the Bronx to a transfer station in Yonkers, where it will be sent to an incinerator in the Hudson Valley. In the remaining four boroughs, the long-term export contracts DSNY has proposed for Fiscal Year 2019 partner with large waste haulers in overburdened communities, and only half of them utilize barge or rail transport; the rest rely on private trucks to bring waste to landfills and incinerators upstate. Those that use barge or rail transport send waste far out of state; Waste Management’s Harlem River facility in the South Bronx is slated to handle the entire solid waste stream of the borough and send it to a landfill in Waverly, Virginia (a small town with a population just under 3,000, of which two-thirds are Black, who also host Sussex State Prison, a few miles from the landfill), and Staten Island’s garbage will be dumped in a South Carolina landfill.1 These export contracts use private transfer stations throughout the city and undermine the work of Environmental Justice activists that hope to reduce the amount of waste processed in the same neighborhoods that have always done so by signing long-term contracts that would interfere with limits on concentrated facility citing. One positive outcome is that instead of concentrating all municipal waste in one specific neighborhood in Brooklyn and Queens, 4 to 5 transfer stations in 3-4 regions of both boroughs are utilized. However, as stated before the entirety of residential and institutional waste from the Bronx is proposed to be processed at one facility in the South Bronx; commercial waste will almost certainly be concentrated there as well, including organic waste exports. A system of geographic accountability where each neighborhood bears an equal burden for waste is a long way off; those who say it cannot be done lack the political will to do so. When fully implemented in New York City, organic waste diversion will have a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions from landfill, but what is truly needed is extended producer responsibility requirements for industries, making sure that businesses implement responsible life-cycles that do not harm humans and the ecosystems humanity lives within. By requiring producers to take the waste from what they produce, extended producer responsibility serves the concept of a circular economy, and if done well requires manufacturers to address the potential hazards

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Bronx Refuse

WM-Harlem River Yard

Borough / Material : Bronx Refuse Address : 98 Lincoln Ave, Bronx, NY TS Owner : Waste Management Final Disposal/Processing : Atlantic Waste LF Disposal Address : 3474 Atlantic Ln, Waverly, VA Transportation Mode : Rail

DSNY LONG-TERM EXPORT CONTRACTS WASTE TRANSFER STATIONS FY2019 Manhattan Refuse (MSW) 1765.9 tons per day >141 trucks

Manhattan Refuse A-1 Compaction

Borough / Material : Manhattan Refuse Address : 325 Yonkers Ave, Yonkers, NY TS Owner : A-1 Final Disposal/Processing : Westchester Resco Disposal Address : 1 John Walsh Blvd, Peekskill, NY Transportation Mode : Private Truck

Bronx Refuse 1710.5 tons per day >136 trucks

WM Fairview

Borough / Material : Manhattan Refuse Address : 61-75 Broad Ave, Fairview, NJ TS Owner : Waste Management Final Disposal/Processing : Grows North LF Disposal Address : 1400 Bordentown Rd, Morrisville, PA Transportation Mode : Private Truck

Brooklyn Refuse IESI of NY

Borough / Material : Brooklyn Refuse Address : 577 Court Street, Brooklyn, NY TS Owner : IESI Final Disposal/Processing : Seneca Meadows Landfill Disposal Address : 1786 Salcman Rd, Waterloo, NY Transportation Mode : Private Truck

Interstate Waste

Queens Refuse 2589 tons per day >207 trucks

Hamilton Ave. MTS

Borough / Material : Brooklyn Refuse Address : 500 Hamilton Ave, Brooklyn, NY TS Owner : DSNY Final Disposal/Processing : High Acres Landfill Disposal Address : 425 Perinton Pkwy, Fairport, NY Transportation Mode : Barge to Rail

Borough / Material : Manhattan Refuse Address : 375 US 1 Truck Rt., Jersey City, NJ TS Owner : IWS Final Disposal/Processing : Cumberland County LF Disposal Address : 135 Vaughn Rd, Shippensburg, PA

Transportation Mode : Private Truck Covanta Essex WTE

Borough / Material : Manhattan Refuse TS Owner : Covanta Disposal Address : 183 Raymond Blvd., Newark, NJ Transportation Mode : DSNY Truck

IESI of NY

Borough / Material : Brooklyn Refuse Address : 110 50th Street, Brooklyn, NY TS Owner : IESI Final Disposal/Processing : Seneca Meadows Landfill Disposal Address : 1786 Salcman Rd, Waterloo, NY Transportation Mode : Private Truck

Queens Refuse North Shore MTS

Borough / Material : Queens Refuse Address : 120-01 31st Ave, Flushing, NY TS Owner : Covanta Final Disposal: Covanta Energy Delaware Valley, PA Disposal Address: 10 Highland Ave, Chester, PA Transportation Mode: Barge to Rail

WM Varick St

Borough / Material : Brooklyn Refuse Address : 215 Varick Street, Brooklyn, NY TS Owner : Waste Management Final Disposal/Processing : High Acres Landfill Disposal Address : 425 Perinton Pkwy, Fairport, NY Transportation Mode : Rail

Tully Environmental

Borough / Material : Brooklyn Refuse Address : 941 Stanley Ave Brooklyn, NY TS Owner : Action Final Disposal/Processing : Keystone Landfill Disposal Address : 249 Dunham Dr, Dunmore, PA 18512 Transportation Mode : Private Truck

Staten Island Refuse Allied Waste (SITS)

Borough / Material : Staten Island Refuse Address : 600 West Service Road, Staten Island, NY TS Owner : Allied Waste Final Disposal/Processing: Lee County Landfill Disposal Address : 1431 Sumter Hwy, Bishopville, SC Transportation Mode : Rail

Borough / Material :Queens Refuse Address : 127-30 34th Ave, Corona, NY TS Owner: Tully Environmental Final Disposal/Processing : Seneca Meadows Landfill Disposal Address : 1786 Salcman Rd, Waterloo, NY Transportation Mode : Private Truck

Brooklyn Refuse 3057 tons per day >245 trucks

Action Environmental

Staten Island Refuse 645.2 tons per day >52 trucks

WM Review

WASTE TRANSFER STATIONS SOLID WASTE DSNY Trucks have a 12.5 ton capacity TPD based on DSNY FY2017 Annual Report

RECYCLABLES/ORGANICS

Borough / Material : Queens Refuse Address: 38-50 Review Ave, Queens, NY TS Owner: Waste Management Final Disposal/Processing: High Acres Landfill Disposal Address: 425 Perinton Pkwy, Fairport, NY Transportation Mode : Rail

American Recycling

Borough / Material : Queens Refuse Address : 172-33 Douglas Ave, Jamaica, NY TS Owner : American Final Disposal/Processing : Seneca Meadows Landfill Disposal Address: 1786 Salcman Rd, Waterloo, NY Transportation Mode : Private Truck

of modern or technical materials. While separating technical materials from nutrient cycles promises to serve the environment, we must remember that no actions on Earth can completely decouple from nature; we are nature, and our industrial processes use the land, air, and water. Rather than keeping pollution “over there”, we must eliminate pollution; materials that contain toxins must be banned, or they will continue to find their way into our oceans, our atmosphere, and our bodies. Only government has the power to do so, as business is guided first and foremost by the bottom line. Municipal regulations are an essential first step, but will be more effective when state and federal

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regulations follow suit. New York City has long spearheaded cultural and economic trends and is in a position to garner international support through its initiatives. Similarly, separating land for industrial, commercial, and residential uses ignores the exposure to hazards that workers and communities overrepresented in industrial neighborhoods face. Historically in New York City and the United States, this means people of color and low-income people. New York has an opportunity to address the values of a culture of consumption that allows an extractive economy to export waste and the accountability for that waste to devalued people and places, communities that have suffered from disinvestment, industrial hazards, and structural violence. In spite of this, communities of color in New York City survive and build joyous spaces of resistance, pioneering approaches like micro-hauling and community-based planning, that would serve the entire city to implement. As the anti-toxics movement and the environmental justice movement began, people of color and low-income people have led the way in fighting harm-causing practices. Now environmental justice organizations in New York City like WE ACT, UPROSE, El Puente, and NYC-EJA are focusing on climate justice and designing transitional economies for a fossil-fuel free culture. It is essential we center these locally rooted voices when planning for the future.2 There IS the potential for a more just system of material management through localizing organic waste processing, but it is not a magic bullet. New York City needs #NMCA RESILIENCE CONCEPTS The following concepts were generated by project participants as measures that can protect our environment while reducing socio-economic inequality. Logos indicate potential partnerships, not formal agreements. Writing and layout by: Aurash Khawarzad (@khawarzad), Drawings by: Mateo Fernandez-Muro (@Matufis) Download at: http://weact.org/climate Coastal Protection Coastal areas, particularly those in the floodplain shown in Figure 1, are in need of green infrastructure that provides ecosystem and flood protections. NYC is currently implementing a coastal protection project worth $3.7 billion and has released its first-ever comprehensive coastal protection plan, A Stronger, More Resilient New York. The plan seeks to deepen public participation in waterfront restoration and protection by expanding the

Waterfront Management Advisory Board and includes pledges to undertake feasibility studies for construction and restoration of flood-prone areas. DEP has also spent over $40 million to-date on wetlands restoration and other coastal protections. What remains to be seen is the extent to which developments will encompass community-based plans or be leveraged to gentrify waterfront areas.

Cooperatively Owned Microgrids Both the City and state government have called for an expansion of distributed generation (DG) technology, including wind, solar, and geothermal. This plan supports the implementation of DG in the form of microgrids that are deployed in vulnerable areas and/or are managed by local stakeholders. The City is currently undertaking a microgrid feasibility study and removing policy roadblocks to microgrid construction by working with ConEd and the Public

Service Corps to revise “ConEd’s standby tariffs to lessen economic impediments to DG”. Microgrids provide multiple benefits, including reliable power when the main grid experiences a blackout, reductions in energy costs, more control for residents over their own energy consumption, and employment opportunities.

Community Bank Financial services should be provided by local institutions connected with the community. Locally-run finance can shift the focus of banks away from their short-term profit, towards longterm investment in infrastructure, development of small businesses, and other much-needed investments in shared resources that will benefit the community.

(cont’d from Urban Agriculture) the multiagency Building Healthy Communities Initiative. NYCHA’s Gardening and Greening program is also working to expand accessibility to community gardens. Our partners, such as the Corbin Hill Food Project, are deeply engaged with these issues and are mapping out an effective model for a sustainable food system in Northern Manhattan.

Places of Worship Churches, mosques, synagogues, and other religious institutions provide flexible spaces for community planning and emergency services, while conveying important climate-related messages through religious practices. Many churches, urged on by Pope Francis, are joining the struggle for climate justice.

Participatory Budgeting In April 2015, over 51,000 NYC residents voted on how to allocate $32 million to various locallydeveloped capital projects across 24 NYC Council Districts. Participatory budgeting is a clear example of how residents can be made to engage directly with governance systems to tailor policy to their needs. Given the level of site specificity essential to effectively address climate change issues, PB should be expanded to encompass more of the City’s budget, green projects, and longerterm investments.

Urban Agriculture Local agriculture is an integral component of climate resiliency, as it helps build communities’ selfreliance while reducing the massive petro-chemical footprint of existing industrialized food systems. The City plans to increase its number of community gardens by partnering with schools, helping gardeners sell their produce at farm stands, and supporting urban farms through

Networked technology controls energy usage and monitors environmental conditions.

Councilman Ydanis Rodríguez

Community Land Trusts (CLT) Organizing property ownership through a CLT is one way to preserve affordable housing by removing properties from the speculative market. CLTs also allow participants to collectively use space for local agriculture, energy production, recreation, and even social services such as childcare. Such shared governance structures can help rebuild the commons in terms of how we use space/resources.

Affordable Cooperative Housing The City plans to create and/or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing between 2015 and 2025. This will be done by maximizing use of City-owned land, mandating inclusionary zoning, and providing tax incentives to developers, among other things. However, many are skeptical that these efforts will provide the necessary amount of housing at truly affordable prices (particularly for vulnerable populations such as the homeless, criminalized populations, the elderly, etc.). Therefore, new cooperative homeownership mechanisms such as community land trusts must be explored.

Design for Pedestrians + Bicyclists OneNYC calls for a bike lanes in areas “with limited bike infrastructure”. This includes bike lanes on the Harlem River bridges and on other auto-oriented streets. The City’s privately-owned bikeshare service, CitiBike, should be expanded to encompass Uptown areas, while taking on a more public nature. For example, equipments should be manufactured locally.

Social Hubs Community meeting spaces are crucial to support ongoing planning efforts, as they are necessary for local organizations to host educational programs, hold meetings, produce materials, use for storage, etc. Having a local hub open for community use can support centralized planning and production activities while remaining grounded in local needs and capacities. Multipurpose Infrastructure New design guidelines should be implemented so that waterfronts promote industrial activities while remaining accessible to the public. This can be done through constructing green spaces that both mitigate flood damage and support waterbased transportation should be constructed. These spaces are also important for cooling the urban heat island and supporting physical activity, local agriculture, and more.

Councilman Mark Levine

Resilient Housing True victory in the climate struggle is not simply based on the preservation of physical conditions, but also on the achievement of lasting security for communities that are now under threat of displacement. Therefore, affordable housing should be a priority for climate advocates, just as it is for the Mayor’s office and many NYers. Supporting NYCHA by reinvesting in its infrastructure is a necessary first step, but we must also ensure that further price hikes do not happen and that NYCHA property leased to private developers does not cause further gentrification. Simultaneously, alternative models for transitional housing, such as the Sugarhill development by Broadway Housing Communities should be explored. It is particularly important to ensure that homes are cool enough for the elderly. Between 2000 and 2011, 85% of those who died from heat in NYC died in their own homes. “NYCHA has an important role to play in reducing this city’s carbon footprint and I look forward to [making] our public housing more efficient and resilient” -Council Member Ritchie Torres

Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito

Healthcare Healthcare services should not only be expanded to provide aid to more people: they must also be made resilient enough to continue to function during the next superstorm, heatwave or other crisis. PostSandy healthcare resilience efforts include installing infrastructure to protect against flooding, building distributed generation systems (and microgrids), and connecting precarious demographic groups with health services. Healthcare providers should establish connections with local emergency response systems so that people who need special health services during a crisis can be reached and treated quickly.

3333 Broadway

Drew Hamilton Houses

Wagner Houses

Sugarhill Houses

Dyckman Houses

Jackie Robinson Houses

Residents have communications systems, including digital and analog alternatives, to coordinate emergency response.

Water conservation systems

The North River Sewage Treatment Plant is in the floodplain

Tech Incubator By working with universities, public agencies, community organizations and members of the “maker” community, a tech incubator can be built to help local activists and entrepreneurs develop socially responsible products, such as improved software for running green technologies. OneNYC plans to support “Clean Tech” industries by creating an Advanced Manufacturing Network that will provide affordable workspaces, business support services and workforce training programs. NYCEDC has also funded several business incubators, including one that focuses on renewable energy.

Space for Social Services Flexible space within residential buildings can be used for social services such as childcare and healthcare, as a meeting space for local groups, and for other activities that can build social cohesion while allowing more freedom for working class people to pursue employment and engage in other forms of social reproduction.

Composting and recycling

Figure 64. Resilience Concepts Map for Northern Mahattan Climate Alliance by WE ACT for Environmental Justice. Local Brewery A local brewery in the manufacturing district can build on local tradition and culture while creating a local craft food industry.

Storage of food, water, and medicine

132 Local Markets Manufacturers, farmers, and other “makers” within the hub can sell their goods at local markets, which support non-conventional commerce, including bartering networks and alternative currencies.

Ferry Service The West Harlem Piers (pictured below) is a good location to add ferry services for daily commuters and to create alternate evacuation routes. OneNYC calls for

Manufacturing Facilities Northern Manhattan’s coastal and interior areas provide many opportunities for light industrial activities (manufacturing of consumer goods), which can both provide jobs for lowincome residents and produce tools for local climate resilience.

Affordable Public Transport In recent years, bicycle lanes, bus system facilities, and subway routes have been constructed in Northern Manhattan. These services can provide important transportation options should other transportation resources be damaged in a storm. However, rising transportation costs are also increasingly limiting transportation access for low-income groups. Transportation options should be made more affordable, perhaps by means of more public investments, expansion of the bikeshare system, and reduced costs for subway and bus services. Transportation services should also be made free to low-income residents during emergency situations.

Live/Work Spaces One of the most effective (yet currently underutilized) tools for communication in relation to climate change is the arts. However, it is difficult for young artists to secure live/work spaces in NYC, forcing them to leave NYC for other cities. As a result, OneNYC pledges to develop

135th Street Marine Waste Transfer Station For several decades, the Marine Waste Transfer Station at 135th Street polluted the Hudson River alongside West Harlem, the neighborhood of Hamilton Heights, and other nearby areas with a 24-hour stream of garbage trucks and barges. The now-abandoned facility represents an exciting opportunity to create a permanent climate resilience center that can support local organizations, educational/cultural programs, freight movement, citizen science, and other climate-related efforts. Several City Council members,

Information Kiosks After Hurricane Sandy, locallyproduced signage played an important role in connecting people with networks and resources that supported recovery efforts. Public signs and stands should be created across the City to provide information on cooling center locations, evacuation zones, and other important resources.

Flooding Barriers The thirteen-plus miles of coastline in Northern Manhattan are home to thousands of residents, small businesses, manufacturing spaces and important pieces of municipal infrastructure. Many of these, particularly in East Harlem, are located within the Hurricane Evacuation Zone and should therefore be hardened against flooding. Flood protections should be planned using design guidelines that prioritize the creation of public space, access to the waterfront, and bicycle route connectivity.

Sources 1. Baiocchi, Gianpaolo et al., “Evaluating Empowerment: Participatory Budgeting in Brazilian Municipalities,” Empowerment in Practice: From Analysis to Implementation, 2006. 2. BBC News Europe, “Greece Debt Crisis: Tsipras Announces Bailout Referendum,” June 2015. 3. Baussan, Danielle, “Social Cohesion: The Secret Weapon in the Fight for Equitable Climate Resilience,” Center for American Progress, May 2015. 4. Bergad, Laird W., “The Concentration of Wealth in New York City Changes in the Structure of Household Income by Race/Ethnic Groups and Latino Nationalities 1990 - 2010,” CUNY, January 2014. 5. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Heat Illness and Deaths - NYC, 2000-2011,” August 9, 2011. 6. Checker, Melissa, “Wiped Out by the ‘Greenwave’: Environmental Gentrification and the Paradoxical Politics of Urban Sustainability,” City and Society, vol. 23, 2011. 7. MacKinnon, Danny & Kate Driscoll Derickson, “From Resilience to Resourcefulness: A Critique of

Conclusion

legislation that addresses the concentration of waste transfer stations and limits the capacity of any one district, such as Intro-495. A deeper examination of our extractive and exploitative economy is also necessary; this will involve an examination of urban space itself, an arrangement where people, wealth, and power are concentrated in dense areas and supported by agricultural and manufacturing spaces in other areas of or outside the city. A regenerative city requires regional collaboration that must bridge the historically contentious and competitive relationship New York City has with its neighbors, rather than dump or export waste on them. As ocean currents and fish-filled streams support coastal forests, as grazing animals support the grasslands they live in, as the cycles of plants and animals – including us – rely on the shifting tides and motion of the Earth to sustain life, we must find a way to be in this world that shares in these rhythms and supports the life systems that support us – all of us.

Endnotes 1 DSNY Finance Division, “Report of the Finance Division on the Fiscal 2019 Preliminary Budget and the Fiscal 2018 Preliminary Mayor’s Management Report for the Department of Sanitation.” 2 Aurash Khawarzad and Mateo Fernandez-Muro, “Northern Manhattan Climate Action Resilience Concepts” (WE ACT for Environmental Justice, 2015), http://weact. org/climate.

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