Op-ed Details Idea to Resolve NYC’s Commercial Waste Zone Debate

Three New York City Chamber of Commerce presidents—from Queens, New Bronx and Brooklyn Chambers of Commerce—wrote an opinion piece on behalf of the city’s small businesses in the New York Daily News detailing what they call a “common-sense” idea to resolve the city’s commercial waste system debate.

In the op-ed, the three Chamber presidents—Thomas Grech (Queens), Lisa Sorin (New Bronx) and Randy Peers (Brooklyn)—suggest using the city’s five boroughs as the basis for reorganization and allowing for “robust competition” within each, rather than splitting the city into 20 commercial waste zones.

According to the op-ed, they believe their approach would “make needed progress sooner, better and cheaper than either the Council or city Sanitation Department plans.”

In May, the New York City Council introduced its version of a bill to create a citywide commercial waste zoning system. The legislation introduced would authorize the city to create a commercial waste zone system that would divide the city into at least 20 zones with each zone serviced by one carter. This proposal is much different than the plan initially unveiled in 2018 by the City of New York Department of Sanitation, which stated the city would be divided into 20 zones, each served by three to five carters selected through a competitive process.

New York Daily News has more:

On behalf of the city’s thousands of small businesses, we recently wrote to Mayor de Blasio and Council Speaker Corey Johnson to express our deep and serious concerns about the plans under consideration to radically restructure the city’s commercial waste system, and the rush to adopt a new system without adequate public review and understanding.

We also proposed a common-sense idea to resolve the intense, polarized and nasty debate among numerous stakeholders — businesses, waste industry, environmental groups and labor — that would achieve many of the same benefits while eliminating the risk of chaos and trash on our streets not being picked up.

The idea is this: Rather than split the city into 20 waste-pickup zones, use the city’s five boroughs as the basis for reorganization, and allow robust competition within each.

Read the full article here.