New York City's notorious private carting industry will soon see its most significant overhaul in decades, as the City Council prepares to enact new regulations reining in the open-market system responsible for collecting an estimated 3 million tons of waste and recycling from businesses annually. [Update: The legislation passed 34-14, with no abstentions]
The legislation will divide the city into 20 commercial trash zones, each served by up to three private hauling companies. The eligible companies will be selected by the city based on their adherence to environmental and safety standards, among other criteria.
Currently, there are no designated zones for the roughly 90 private carters that collect trash from the city's businesses, contributing to excessive pollution, overworked and exploited employees, and widespread traffic violence. A report from the city found that a single neighborhood might be served by 50 private carting companies, with trucks passing through a given block as many as 400 times a night.
"Waste hauling vehicles are needlessly driving through our communities, increasing air pollution that negatively impact public health and emit greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to our current climate crisis," said Speaker Corey Johnson during a press conference on Wednesday. "We will vote to make our air cleaner, our streets safer and provide businesses throughout the city more transparent pricing."
The bill's passage follows years of negotiations and wrangling from a variety of interest groups, resulting in a last-minute compromise. While Councilmember Antonio Reynoso, the bill's sponsor, had initially called for zones to be served by a single carter—as many cities have done with success—a deal reached earlier this month did away with the exclusive zones.
The agreement to allow three carters per zone was intended to appease business groups, such as the Real Estate Board of New York, as well as Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, who'd argued that exclusive zoning would give rise to monopolies.
Environmental justice and labor groups have backed the legislation despite the dilution, noting that the new zoning framework could cut miles traveled by private garbage trucks in half across the city.
"It will take a system that is completely broken and pull it into the 21st century," Eric Goldestein, the NYC Environmental Director for the NRDC, told Gothamist ahead of the vote. "It's probably the biggest change in waste handling since efforts to root out organized crime in the 1990s."
While reform efforts have been underway for nearly six years, the private haulers have attracted renewed scrutiny following a series of ProPublica articles on traffic deaths and brutal working conditions within the industry. At least 28 people have been killed by commercial waste truck drivers since 2010. In one recent case, a driver with the since-shuttered Sanitation Salvage was found to have killed two people on city streets, raising questions about the effectiveness of the Business Integrity Commission, the industry's ostensible monitor.
The new legislation will give BIC the authority to enforce safety regulations, while expanding the oversight role of the Department of Sanitation, Reynoso said.
The reforms are also aimed at reducing the industry’s dependence on waste transfer stations, the largely unregulated facilities that expose nearby residents to diesel fuel pollutants and higher rates of asthma. Advocates have long noted that low-income communities and communities of color are overburdened by those facilities. The commercial waste industry, meanwhile, has increased the amount of trash it disposes at these facilities by 35 percent since 2015, according to one report.
Under the plan, the Department of Sanitation would now take into account a carter’s use of transfer stations and its history of compliance with public health laws when licensing the zones.
Reynoso thanked Johnson for following through in his commitment to passing the reforms, and spoke about his own story as "a young, brown boy from the south side of Williamsburg," where car exhaust from the BQE spews into the neighborhood, and until recently, 40 percent of the city's trash flowed in from private carters.
"I set out, never thinking through destiny or fate, that I would be able to stand here and effect meaningful change to my community. And today I'm standing here feeling that as chair of the Sanitation Committee, that I was able to make that happen," Reynoso said.
The councilmember added, “The reform to private sanitation will improve the lives of all New Yorkers. We persisted for six straight years to reach today, the righteous cause has prevailed.”
