Waste Management Practices in New York City, Hong Kong and Beijing
By Steven Cohen, Hayley Martinez and Alix Schroder December 2015
Introduction
Solid waste management is a challenge for large urban areas around the world. Removing garbage from residential, institutional and commercial locations in cities is a major logistical and operational task. Waste management is usually a function of local government, and is often a city’s largest budget item. Solid waste generation rates are rising fast, particularly in cities experiencing increasing population rates and higher economic activity, putting pressure on municipal governments to deal with rising costs and environmental impacts.
The waste from cities around the world is already enough to fill a line of trash trucks 5,000 kilometers long every day. In 1900, the world had 220 million urban residents that produced 300,000 tons of waste per day; by 2000, those numbers grew to 2.9 billion people generating 3 million tons of solid waste per day. Worldwide, waste rates are expected to triple by 2100, to exceed 11 million tons per day. The global cost of dealing with all that trash is rising too, from $205 billion a year in 2010 to $375 billion by 2025, with the sharpest cost increases in developing countries (The World Bank, 2013). Due to this volume of waste material, an increasing amount of waste is recycled, burned for energy, or in the case of food waste, reprocessed as fertilizer.
East Asia is now the world’s fastest growing region for waste. Waste generation in Asia’s urban areas is expected to soon reach 1.8 million tons per day (World Bank, 2013). In 2004, China surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest waste generator. The Chinese government has developed a number of laws and development plans related to waste management, many of which are discussed in the government’s Five Year Plan- the five year social and economic plan for the country, developed periodically by the National People’s Congress. Waste management practices in China are governed by the ‘Solid Waste Pollution Prevention and Control Law’ (2005) and the ‘Circular Economy Promotion Law’ (2009).
The 12th Five Year Plan states that by 2015 all counties will be able to manage solid waste, with an emphasis on recycling of post-consumer materials. However, China is undergoing an unprecedented increase in waste generation. According to the World Bank, the quantity of municipal solid waste generated in China’s cities has increased fivefold between 1980 and 2009, from 85,000 tons to 430,000 tons per day, and is projected to reach 1.6 million tons per day by 2030 (2014). Most waste in China goes to landfills or unregulated waste heaps outside major cities, and as China’s landfills are filling up, cities are turning to burning waste to generate electricity at waste-to-energy plants. Overall in China, the number of waste incinerators is projected to increase from 93 in 2009 to 200 in 2015, raising the daily disposal capacity from 55,400 tons to 140,000 tons (World Bank, 2014). However, there is increasing public concern about the environmental performance of these waste incinerators, and their impact on the local environment and communities.
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Many cities around the world are implementing innovative measures to deal with waste, and are increasingly incorporating waste management into sustainability plans. Some cities are setting positive examples through aggressive recycling and zero waste programs. Cities are reducing food waste with better storage and transportation. They are implementing construction strategies that increase reuse of materials. Some local policies such as waste disposal fees and other charges are being used to encourage waste reduction. Some cities have banned the use of plastic shopping bags and some are requiring that stores charge for the use of bags.
This case study examines waste management practices in three cities: New York City, Hong Kong and Beijing. We begin by assessing New York City to provide an overview of waste management practices in a large, complex U.S. city. We then focus on Hong Kong, and finally on Beijing, to provide detail on the waste management practices of two major Chinese cities and learn how they are dealing with the growing volume of waste generated by these large cities. In each of the three cases we describe the history of waste management in that locale, the status of waste management today, and discuss the challenges faced in each location. Finally, we compare the practices in these cities, and detail the technical, managerial and political issues that define the waste management system in each place.
New York City
New York City’s 8 million residents and millions of businesses, construction projects and non-resident employees generate 14 million tons of waste and recyclables per year (City of New York, 2014). This amount is so vast that waste is handled by two separate systems – one public and one private. The public agency – the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) – serves residential buildings, government agencies and many nonprofit organizations. Private commercial firms do not receive free garbage pick-up by the city government. They must pay private firms to remove their solid waste. The private waste removal system is comprised of a small group of waste removal firms that are regulated by the City’s Business Integrity Commission. This Commission licenses waste hauling firms that remove commercial waste. The New York City Department of Sanitation collaborates with the Sims Multi Recycling Recovery Facility (Sims), the Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR), and GreeNYC to manage the city’s waste through reduction initiatives in the following areas: waste reduction, recycling, and composting and organic waste diversion. Spending on residential and commercial garbage is about $2.3 billion of the city’s $75 billion annual budget (Citizens Budget Commission, 2014).
During the twentieth century, the New York City Department of Sanitation relied on a number of landfills for garbage disposal. Then in December 2001, the city’s last garbage dump closed. In response, the City Council adopted a twenty-year plan for exporting government-managed waste, relying on a truck-based system and a combination of local, land-based transfer stations that took the city’s garbage and disposed it in landfills, recycling facilities and waste-to-energy plants in neighboring states and in places as far away as 750 miles. Once local landfills were filled, and efforts to build local waste-to-energy incinerators were blocked, waste export became the only option for New York City (DSNY, 2006). The City recognized that waste disposal costs would continue to increase as nearby landfills closed and trucks would have to travel to more distant landfills.
Of the 3.8 million tons of solid waste that the New York City Department of Sanitation now collects annually, 14% is recycled, 76% is sent to landfills and 10% is converted to energy at a waste-to-energy facility (Citizens Budget Commission, 2014). The waste that goes to landfills often travels long distances to states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and South Carolina. New York is one of the few large U.S. cities
2 that funds trash collection with general tax revenue – it doesn’t charge customers for waste collection.
History of the Problem
New York City has a long and difficult history in solid waste management. Ocean dumping ended in 1935, brought on by a federal lawsuit filed by New Jersey coastal cities (McCrory, 1998). With plans for new incinerators slowed, first by the Great Depression and then by World War II, the city found itself struggling to meet its waste disposal needs. In 1947, the Fresh Kills Landfill opened in Staten Island, one of the city’s five boroughs. Initially, the city’s new mayor promised that “raw” garbage would only be landfilled at Fresh Kills for three years – the time it would take to build a large incinerator in every borough. However, by the 1960s, one-third of the city’s trash was burned in over 17,000 apartment building incinerators and 22 municipal incinerators. The remaining residential refuse was still sent to Fresh Kills as well as the city’s other landfills (Miller, 2000). As environmental awareness grew, public pressure began to mount against incineration and landfilling. Old landfills and incinerators were gradually shut down, with the last municipal incinerator closed in 1992. By the late 1990s, Fresh Kills was the only remaining waste disposal option for the residential and public waste managed by the New York City Department of Sanitation (Earth Institute, 2001).
In 1996, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Governor George Pataki announced that Fresh Kills would receive its last ton of garbage no later than January 1, 2002, and the city developed a Fresh Kills Closure Task Force. The principal goal of the task force was to develop a short-term plan for diverting the waste from Fresh Kills up to its full closure in 2001. In order to divert the waste prior to closure, the city entered into a number of three-year interim contracts with private waste haulers. The city’s annual bill for collecting and disposing residential trash jumped by nearly 50%, to about $658 million in 2000 and then to nearly $1 billion in 2001. While New York City was paying under $50 per ton for disposal at Fresh Kills, some of the interim contracts were nearly double the price, costing more than $100 per ton when increased transportation costs were taken into account (Earth Institute, 2001).
The next goal of the task force was to develop a longer-term solution to the waste issue. Under the long- term plan, approved by both the New York City Council and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the city entered into six 20-year contracts with private waste companies. The contracts featured fixed cost increases and, according to the DSNY, no minimum tonnage requirements. Although the plan was ostensibly long-term, it was and is vulnerable to cost escalation and increased regulation from the states that host landfills. Furthermore, the plan doesn’t include careful planning for waste transfer processes within the city.
In the summer of 2002, the city began to take some steps to develop elements of a true long-term plan for managing waste. While the overall waste export strategy was still being pursued, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a plan to develop garbage transfer stations that would compact refuse and ship it by barge for disposal. These stations would be placed in waterfront locations in each of the five New York City boroughs and would replace a system of land-based waste transfer that uses thousands of diesel-fueled trucks daily to haul garbage through city streets to disposal sites in other states. In late 2003, the projected expense of building these transfer stations grew, putting the plan on hold.
Relying on waste export systems leaves the city vulnerable over the long run, as both restrictions on waste disposal and its costs are likely to escalate. Future regulations on new landfills by federal and state environmental protection agencies could increase the cost of new landfills and limit future landfill
3 capacity. In addition, landfill operators will certainly raise prices over time, and state and municipal governments will likely enact taxes on waste disposal (Thompson, 2004).
Incorporating Sustainability
In 2006, the City Council approved a Comprehensive Solid Waste Management Plan (SWMP), which aimed to establish a cost-effective, reliable and environmentally sound system for managing the City’s waste. The cornerstone of the City’s recycling efforts is its curbside program, which collects paper, metal, glass and plastic. After the City experienced a number of changes in recycling policies that resulted in public confusion, this plan worked with City Council to set percentage targets for recycling, enhance public education on recycling practices, and establish a city office to provide outreach and education. The City initially aimed to achieve a 25% diversion rate by 2007 (DSNY, 2006). A diversion rate is the percentage of waste that is diverted from landfills to some form of waste treatment or reuse. The plan also aimed to reduce the City’s dependence on a truck-based export system, to export in a manner that is cost-effective, environmentally responsible and sensitive to the local communities. It also aimed to simply export less waste. The plan listed a series of initiatives and goals within three areas: recycling, residential waste and commercial waste.
In 2011, solid waste management became incorporated into sustainability planning under PlaNYC, New York City’s comprehensive sustainability plan. PlaNYC had a goal of reducing the high amount of greenhouse gasses generated by waste transportation and disposal in landfills. One of the goals under PlaNYC was to divert 75% of solid waste from landfills by 2030. New York City’s Solid Waste Management Plan expects to reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by 34,000 tons while diverting 2,000 tons of waste per day from land-based solid waste transfer stations in Brooklyn and Queens to marine transfer stations (City of New York, 2014). The City opened a Materials and Recovery Facility at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal which sorts metal, glass and plastic. With the opening of this facility, the New York City Department of Sanitation expanded the curbside recycling program to include all rigid plastics – the first expansion of the program in 20 years.
The Sanitation Department also launched a voluntary residential organics recycling program in parts of Staten Island, Brooklyn and the Bronx, and expanded the school food waste composting pilot to 400 public schools in 2013. This is also part of a pilot anaerobic digestion program, in conjunction with the Newtown Creek wastewater treatment plant. The City added more public recycling bins, to a total of 2,190. It also regularly holds events for residents to safely dispose of textiles and clothing, electronics, and other household hazardous waste. In 2013, the City Council proposed the Commercial Organics Law. Once this law is enacted, it will require large-scale commercial generators of organic waste to have separate collection of their organic streams. They also passed a law to ban the sale of polystyrene foam products beginning July 2015, since this material cannot be recycled. This law was overturned by the courts and continues to be debated.
New York City is pursuing several different strategies to improve waste management, including increasing recycling capture rates; encouraging residents and businesses to divert organic material from landfills; and overcoming permitting obstacles related to waste-to-energy. The 2014 progress report for PlaNYC determined that the goal of reducing waste sent to landfills by 75% was gradually being reached, with 52% diverted in the previous year (City of New York, 2014).
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In April 2015, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the rebranding of PlaNYC to One NYC, a plan for a strong and just city that includes strategies for growth, sustainability, resiliency and equity. Under this plan, the city’s goal is zero waste by 2030, such that no waste is sent to landfills. The goals include: