New York, NY —
As we head into the homestretch of 2007, New York City looks like it will quietly miss an environmental goal it set for itself last year, in its solid waste management plan -- to recycle 25 percent of the garbage generated by its residents and institutions. Right now, our diversion, or recycling, rate is stuck at 16 and a half percent.
The city’s trying to remind folks to recycle. The Sanitation Department’s bin and bag characters marched last week in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. But the city may find more of an immediate payoff if it looks in the mirror, and focuses on improving recycling in its own institutions….especially the schools.
Lucy: we were just thinking about the amount of paper we saw teachers giving out to students, and then as they leave the room they just throw them in the trash can, and it just felt like a complete waste of paper.
Reporter: That’s 16-year-old Lucy Sexton, a senior at Edward R. Murrow High School in Midwood, Brooklyn. She and other members of the school’s environmental club helped start a recycling program in 2005……eighteen years after the city mandated recycling. That’s not to say Murrow wasn’t recycling all that time….but it does mean that, whatever the school was doing before, students and staff weren’t in on it. And some people actually have been hostile to the idea that Murrow was going to start recycling now.
Lucy: I’ve been in a classroom where my teacher spent five minutes making fun of our efforts and crumpling up paper in front of us, and be like, “oh you think this is going to be recycled?” And I was like, that’s what’s causing students not to recycle. That’s what’s giving people no hope.
Reporter: One could extend that feeling of hopelessness and apathy throughout the school system. The Department of Sanitation’s most reliable numbers on school recycling show a 9.5% recycling rate during the last school year. Nine and a half percent. Remember, citywide, the rate is 16.5%. If kids and teachers are recycling at home, what’s keeping them from recycling at school? 17-year-old Katie Appleman, a Murrow senior and fellow environmental club member, says part of the problem was that classrooms weren’t set up for it.
Katie: a lot of rooms had a blue bin, and that would be their garbage can.
And you’d see them put all the garbage in that can. So it didn’t make any effect that it was a blue recycling can.
Reporter: The environmental club made sure each classroom had both garbage AND recycling bins. But now there were the custodians to deal with. Mimi Bluestone, a social studies teacher and advisor to the environmental club, says custodians have been the school’s “weak link.”
Bluestone: You know, if students and teachers are separating, but then they realize that, at end of the day, their regular garbage and their paper in the recycling bin, all of this is going into the same bin, ‘why did we bother to separate’…a kind of cynicism sets in. A lot of staff became very frustrated, and we need the staff on board to get the students to do it.
Perhaps predictably, custodians say, “Don’t look at us! YOU guys aren’t recycling right!” It’s a frequent complaint. Murrow’s problems were compounded by a high custodial turnover rate – seven in the last three years. Joseph Reilly is Murrow custodial engineer Number Seven, on the job for four months. He says it’s not the job of his staff to pick out trash from the recycling bin.
Reilly: I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but if someone empties a can and he sees empty coffee cups or liquids, I mean, someone’s not going to stand there…I mean, it’s source oriented. Everyone has to go with it, comply with the program.
Reporter: The environmental club agrees. It’s made some changes to streamline recycling, and members believe this is the year where their efforts are really going to take hold and pay off.
Here’s the amazing thing about Murrow High School’s Sisyphusian recycling effort. It’s an award-winning program. It won a Golden Apple award and six thousand dollars from the Sanitation Department last spring. So, if Murrow faces an ongoing battle to get people to recycle correctly, think of the challenge facing schools that don’t have passionate advocates like Mimi Bluestone or Lucy Sexton. Perhaps, along with carrots…or in this case, Golden Apples….the Sanitation Department should also use sticks. Robert Lange, head of the Sanitation Department’s Bureau of Waste Prevention, Reuse and Recycling, says the agency tried that, about ten years ago…handing out tickets to several principals for not recycling.
Lange: it got a lot of peoples’ attention. I’m not sure how effective it was. For the city to write a ticket against itself, that’s not terribly effective.
Reporter: Lange says the initiative was quickly scotched. He’s not surprised that schools have been such poor recyclers. It’s only been since 2002 that the mayor has controlled the city’s school system….and only in the last two years have principals been given control over their school’s operations, not just their curricula.
Lange: I mean, this really sounds silly, in a way, 18 years into the law, but they’re coming to it slowly. It’s really not that complicated, but in a place like New York, where you have a very strong unionized work force, it takes time to have that work force change its habits.
Reporter: The Education Department says it’s committed to recycling. It offers set-up assistance to principals, and it’s launched a pilot project at administrative offices in Queens that it hopes to expand soon. Murrow High School is far beyond the pilot phase, and now faces the on-going job of reminding people that recycling is important. 15-year-old sophomore Jessica Lai says she’s doing her part.
Jessica: I think my teacher almost threw away a paper in the garbage can, and I was like, “No! Put it in the blue recycling bin.” And he did it. And it was all good. [group laughs]
Reporter: School administrators may be “coming to recycling slowly,” but thankfully, there are some students who are pushing them to move faster. This is WNYC.