Waste of the Day: NYC Transit Trashed Recyclables
Topline: New York City’s bus depots and maintenance facilities are legally required to recycle their paper and cardboard, but it rarely happens.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority’s inspector general visited 40 NYC Transit facilities and found that 21 of them mixed trash and recyclables together in the same dumpster. The other 19 facilities’ employees properly separated the material, but the company they hired to pick up the waste mixed it all together in the same truck.
The inspector general estimates the city lost $800,000 over five years by unnecessarily paying to send the recyclables to landfills and by failing to claim credits from selling the materials.
Key facts: Seven maintenance facilities did not have any recycling bins. Sixteen others had bins that were not clearly labeled to distinguish them from trash cans, the audit found.
The city pays Action Carting Environmental Services to pick up trash at the facilities under a contract that requires the company to recycle paper and cardboard waste. But the inspector general took videos of Action Carting’s employees commingling paper together with other trash in one container.
Action Carting used to recycle almost 800 tons of paper for the city every year, but less than 200 tons were recycled annually from 2020 to 2024. The MTA never questioned the decrease, according to the audit, and voted to extend Action Carting’s contract in 2024.
The company is contractually required to pick up recyclables from the maintenance facilities five times a week, but it typically happens less than once a week, the audit found.
Action Carting Environmental Services received $73.4 million from NYC from 2017 to 2024, according to records obtained by Open the Books.
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Summary: The city agency’s recycling enforcement may belong in the trash, but taxpayers should not have to pay $800,000 to put it there.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.
