Published: Spring 2008

Our disposable society is gradually learning that our resources are limited and that we need to learn to conserve them. Today, in addition to meeting the requirements of the City's recucling laws, many additional opportunities exist for every New Yorker to recycle.

TWO RESOURCES FOR RECYCLING COMPLIANCE

1) ABRI Program
New York City's Department of Sanitation's Bureau of Waste Prevention Reuse and Recycling is seeking to recruit interested apartment building residents, superintendents, porters, and management company employees to participate in a new program to improve recycling in their apartment buildings. The program is called the NYC Apartment Building Recycling Initiative (ABRI). It provides training for the participants.

When a building enrolls, it receives a non-enforcement-related site visit by the Department's Outreach Coordinators to assess how the building is recycling. After the participants complete their training session, they receive a building evaluation based on the site visit with suggestions on how to improve recycling in the building. Once this process is completed, the building can always send new supers or volunteers to future training sessions and can also contact the ABRI program with questions or problems as they arise.

The ABRI program has been up and running for just over a year, and, to date, over 200 buildings are registered in the program and 133 buildings that have sent residents, supers, and even some building managers to the evening training sessions. Increasingly, ABRI is becoming very popular with cooperative and condominium boards. Often, ABRI participants are members of their board who bring their supers to the training; using what they have learned, they are implementing 1) improvements on how the building is set up for recycling; 2) regular education geared to all residents; and 3) the organization of a committee or ad hoc group to keep the focus on recycling all year round. Additional information can be found on the Department of Sanitation website at: http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwasteless/html/recycling/recycling_abri.shtml or by calling Eva Martinez at the Bureau of Waste Prevention Reuse and Recycling at 917 237-5654

2) OROE Program
Condominium and cooperative Boards looking for ways to better understand the city's recycling rules have an ally in the Office of Recycling Outreach and Education (OROE). OROE has a staff of recycling coordinators who will help educate Board Members, residents and building service staff on what can be recycled and how to go about meeting the city's requirements. Free of charge!

OROE was created when the New York City Council adopted the Mayor's Solid Waste Management Plan and is housed in Council on the Environment NYC (CENYC)--a non-profit dedicated to improving New York City's Environment. OROE's mission is to help New Yorkers increase the amount of recyclables diverted from the waste stream and to promote waste reduction, materials reuse and composting efforts.

OROE has outreach coordinators who will train and educate building service personnel and occupants on the methods, requirements and importance of recycling. The office will also provide information and training on other waste reduction, reuse and composting programs offered by the City and various not-for-profit organizations.

If your cooperative or condominium would like to take advantage of this free training, visit www.CENYC.org.

RECYCLING ELECTRONICS
1) Upper West Side Recycling also accepts and recycles batteries and E-waste and runs periodic collections at fixed locations. For further information, contact Jeff Twine at 212 865-9595.
2) Per Scholas is New York City's only electronics processing facility. It has been reconditioning and recycling E-Waste since 1999. In addition to making low-cost computers available to children and adults who cannot afford a new computer, Per Scholas also trains local youth for full-time jobs as computer technicians. For more information call Per Scholas: (718) 772-0651.

CLOTHING AND TEXTILERECYCLING OPPORTUNITY
Upper West Side Recycling is a long established recycling organization. It focus on collection and recycling of materials that are not picked up by the NYC Department of Sanitation.

Upper West Side Recycling has a service to help buildings recycle clothing and other textiles. It helps buildings organize and publicize an in-house textile drive, and will furnish a portable 4 x 21/2 foot clothing bin so that building residents don't have to haul these goods to a collection site, or worse, dump them in the trash.

Recyclable textiles include clean clothing (wearable or unwearable, shoes, pocketbooks, curtains, sheets, blankets, comforters, and towels. By participating you can help resident do their spring cleaning, keep textiles out of our landfills and recycle in an easy, convenient way.

Upper West Side Recycling will organize textile recycling in churches, schools, and other organizations. Pickups are mainly in Manhattan, but they will go to the outer boroughs for large quantities. For further information contact Jeff Twine at 212-865-9595