A bin for used printer cartridges in Clarke's apartment

There are three bins for paper recycling in Maggie Clarke’s apartment, a sunny two-bedroom at the northern end of Riverside Drive.  Cardboard boxes and brown packing paper overflow from one, spilling onto the coffee table in the living room.  More empty boxes collect on top of a bookshelf in the hallway, set aside for mailing Christmas presents. Used batteries are scattered on a kitchen table, not yet fully exhausted; dead ones go in a bucket labelled “Batteries Only!” Clarke redeems the five cent deposit on glass bottles, and takes squeeze bottles and yogurt containers to Whole Foods, one of the few places in the city that recycles number five plastics.

For more than twenty years, Clarke has worked to reduce the amount of trash New York City throws away. Her goal is zero waste, the idea that “all discards should be prevented,” she said, drawing a distinction between what is discarded and what is waste. “Things that can be reused, recycled or composted are not trash. They are useful resources. And they are not wasted.”

It is difficult to identify what has and hasn’t been discarded in Clarke’s apartment, so it is difficult to measure exactly how much trash she actually throws away. The things in her office wastebasket—mostly mixed plastics, like a well-worn styrofoam and polyester bicycle seat cover, and packaging for printer cartridges—will likely end up in a landfill. The used cartridges have their own receptacle. The walls of the office are lined with dozens of disheveled filing cabinets, with papers stacked on top of already full, open drawers. A sign on the door says, “Do Not Clean: This Room Is Undergoing A Scientific Dirt Experiment.”

One of Clarke's three paper recycling baskets.

Clarke and her overcrowded apartment can be viewed as a microcosm of a major city, and how it deals with its trash. She struggles to get rid of much of the junk that takes up space in her home, things that no longer serve a purpose for her, but may be useful to someone else, just as New York struggles to dispose of more than 12,000 tons of waste each day, not all of it useless.

There is a system to all that stuff, she said. Clarke, who has two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in environmental sciences, works with a lot of systems. She began her career in solid waste, working for the New York Power Authority and New York Department of Sanitation, to build cleaner, more efficient incinerators, at a time when converting waste to energy seemed like a win-win solution to increasing pressure to close landfills and find renewable sources of electricity.

As the solid waste environmental landscape shifted, and the dangers of incinerators became more apparent, Clarke said she made recommendations at the sanitation department to reduce harmful pollution, like removing batteries and heavy metals from the waste stream before being incinerated. Her suggestions were largely ignored, she said. “The culture at the sanitation department going way, way back has been mainly operational. Pick it up, put it down. That’s what their mentality is.”

In 1999, Clarke conducted an environmental shopping study for her doctoral thesis. She created pilot programs at two supermarkets in Manhattan to educate consumers and give them options to make more eco-friendly purchases. Waste reduction requires a multi-faceted approach, she says, “from education and enforcement, to legislation and policy and incentives, like charging for garbage. And that’s just the short list.”

Clarke doesn’t believe the city is committed to making those kinds of changes. “The idea of things like recycling markets and recycling infrastructure…is anathema to [the department of] sanitation, like, ‘Oh, that’s way too complicated. We’re not going to do that.’ And waste prevention is way more complicated than recycling.”

In addition to curbside recycling pickup, the sanitation department does sponsor some waste reuse programs, such as the Materials Exchange Development Program, and NYWasteMatch, a site that connects companies that generate industrial waste with companies that can reuse it. But when it comes to reducing the volume of household waste that goes to landfills, the city sets the bar fairly low, and still has trouble clearing it, Clarke said. In 2006, the city’s solid waste management plan stated that 25% of all residential waste should be diverted for recycling. Last year, that figure was only 16%.

The results of Clarke’s doctoral study on shopping were mixed. Some of the desired behaviors increased, like purchasing refills and recycling bottles, while others decreased, like choosing products with recyclable packaging. Efforts to sign up shoppers for a cloth diaper service were fruitless. “Habit is a very important word when it comes to this kind of thing,” she said.

It takes effort to create those habits. Even among people who want to be green, there exists a “cognitive behavioral laziness,” says Kirstin Appelt, a post-doctoral scholar at the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University. “People don’t have the resources to do everything they want. You have to make the behavior easier.” Appelt says taking steps placing recycling bins in prominent locations, having people commit to it in advance, and helping people understand the cost of not recycling can lead to increased adoption of those behaviors. “Once you form the habit, you are likely to continue, unless something makes you see it differently.”

When the habits don’t work, Clarke says, it may be necessary to legislate. She draws a comparison with efforts to eliminate smoking. “After you’ve been doing 40-50 years of educating, and then taxing, and still people start, now it’s time to say, ‘OK, you can’t do it anymore.’”

Does that work? Legislating around the edges has been spotty. New York residents are required to recycle, but it’s apartment buildings that are fined when tenants throw away glass and paper. And since New York enacted indoor smoking laws in 2003, the percentage of current smokers in the city has dropped only a little more than three percent.

Clarke now bills herself as a zero waste consultant. On her website, she lists an extensive resume of teaching positions, publications, and community activism. She founded RING, a community garden in Inwood, originally built on a patch of asphalt with donated top soil. The garden boasts four solar panels powering a Koi pond filtration system, and three bulging compost bins.

Compost seems to be a sore spot with Clarke. In the garden, a rat has managed to get inside one of the bins, even though it was advertised as “rat proof,” she said. Grocery bags of rotting food scraps are left along the wall of the garden, inches from the containers. The compost must be mixed and sifted, but without enough volunteers, the garbage on top doesn’t mix with the soil at the bottom.

After more than twenty years, Clarke still hasn’t solved all of her personal waste problems. She tries to compost vegetable peels and egg shells in a small bin in her kitchen, but the process draws rats and flies, and stinks. “I’ve been going back and forth on compost,” she said. She recently bought a new type of container that has a matrix of fine holes drilled in the top. In two weeks of use, Clarke said it smells better, and she hasn’t had any pests. As she has worked to eliminate New York’s waste, Clarke continues to try new solutions to eliminate her own.

The Consumer Electronics Association, along with other trade groups, filed a suit against the city and the sanitation department in United States District Court in July, saying the law, and the way it was implemented, restricts interstate commerce and places an undue burden on the manufacturers the groups represent.

At issue is the Electronic Equipment Recycling and Reuse Act, which requires electronic manufacturers to collect and recycle nearly any discarded digital device by 2011. It was passed by the city council in 2007, overriding a veto by Mayor Bloomberg.

In the lawsuit, the CEA claims that the program requires manufacturers to “build an unprecedented waste management infrastructure and deploy personnel and resources to directly collect electronic waste.” The city has agreed not to enforce the law until after a hearing on the lawsuit.

That hearing, which was scheduled for last month, was postponed after other city and state governments filed amicus briefs with the court, siding with the city. Among those were San Francisco and Portland, both of which have similar e-waste laws.

“The lawsuit is so broad based in nature, it would threaten to undermine similar laws in 19 other states, as well as future laws in other cities,” said Kate Sinding, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council. The NRDC is an advocate for the law in New York, as well as similar laws in other municipalities, and has joined the lawsuit as a defendant.

Rules created by the Department of Sanitation require manufacturers to file electronic waste management plans that include residential collection of electronics over fifteen pounds.

“The requirement is unprecedented, disastrously expensive, and will harm the environment by putting hundreds of additional trucks on City streets,”  Jennifer Boone Bemisderfer, an electronics association representative,  said in an email.

Ms. Sinding disagrees that the law is unprecedented, saying that the manufacturers “are relying on overly burdensome interpretations of the regulations.”

According to the rules, acceptable waste management plans would require manufacturers to set up at least one collection point in each community board district for devices under fifteen pounds, and schedule residential pickup of larger items. Companies could be fined for not filing or implementing approved plans.

In rules published by the sanitation department, companies are encouraged to work together to create recycling plans. However, Ms. Sinding said the department has not offered to contract with manufacturers to pick up the electronics through the city’s existing waste and recycling collection infrastructure. The sanitation department would not comment on the lawsuit.

The hearing in federal court is scheduled for January 19, 2010. If the judge rules for the city, manufacturers will have 30 days to submit their waste management plans.

Entrance sign to the controversial Marine Transfer Station

Although Mayor Bloomberg overwhelmingly carried the East 90’s in the last election, he is not a popular man among the residents here when it comes to the issue of garbage. The neighborhood is up in arms over his plan to re-open a huge garbage transfer site on East 91st Street and the FDR Drive.

The station on the East River would take Manhattan’s trash and put it on barges for removal to out-of-state landfills. Five years after Bloomberg announced this proposal, residents are still perplexed that he has not responded to community opposition.

“It’s like he isn’t listening,” said Francisco Gomerez, a doorman at 530 East 91st Street, “People talk and talk, and he doesn’t care.”

“I think they’ve gone down a path and they feel they can’t change course, ” Gifford Miller, former City Council speaker and Bloomberg’s opponent in the 2005 Mayoral election, said in an email.

The city’s old Marine Transfer Station closed in 1999 after nearly 60 years of operation. Trash is currently trucked out of Manhattan, and the city intends to cut down on truck pollution and mileage by sending the garbage by barge instead. Residents fear that if the station is re-opened, hundreds of garbage trucks will pass through the neighborhood each week to dump trash at this collection site.

The entrance to the station is on a quiet, residential section of York Avenue, lined with mom and pop stores and sidewalk cafes. An access ramp runs between a playground and two soccer fields belonging to Asphalt Green, a not-for-profit sports complex that offers programs to approximately 600,000 members of the community.

Wilfredo Carrero, the superintendent of the nearby Gracie Gardens apartment complex, remembers the years when the transfer station was open: “ York Avenue was a lot busier. Garbage trucks were double parked all the way down to 89th Street. It was smelly, especially in summer time, and there were a lot more rats along the street.”

When Bloomberg announced his new waste proposal in the fall of 2004, he explained that Manhattan had to be responsible for its own garbage. Manhattan creates half of the city’s garbage but doesn’t have a transfer station for waste. The bulk of the city’s waste is trucked to transfer stations in the South Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens.

According to Tony Ard, the director of the Gracie Point Community Council, the principal community organization fighting the re-opening, Bloomberg pushed this plan for political reasons. “He’s pandering for votes in minority communities in the outer boroughs. It’s a political game, pure and simple. He needed to support this because it was perceived as a matter of environmental justice.” Bloomberg has stood firmly behind his plan, as have many local environmental groups, including The Natural Resources Defense Council and the New York League of Conservation Voters.

The Gracie Point Community Council has spearheaded the neighborhood’s opposition, filing environmental lawsuits and enlisting local politicians.

The group, which claims 5,000 subscribers and a $2 million war chest, organized a thousand-person protest rally at Asphalt Green in 2005 and bused hundreds of outraged residents to City Hall for the waste-plan hearings.

Tony Ard said that they had proposed cheaper alternative solutions like trucking the garbage to the Harlem River Rails and then exporting it by train. They also suggested remodeling what is now a pound for towed cars in the West 30’s into an alternative marine transfer station for Manhattan’s garbage.

Despite their efforts, the City Council overwhelmingly approved Bloomberg’s waste plan in July of 2006.

At this point, Gracie Point has three lawsuits in the State Supreme Courts. Two suits are challenging the Department of Environmental Conservation permits necessary for the construction of the Marine Transfer Station. The third claims that the station would intrude on the public parkland of Asphalt Green and the East River Esplanade – a violation of a New York State public trust doctrine. As neighborhood volunteer Sarah Gallagher says, “We hope to keep this in court long enough so it never happens.”

Failing that, they have the hope of legislation. In 2008, Assembly member Micah Z. Kellner proposed a law, originally drafted by Gracie Point, that would prohibit the construction of any solid-waste transfer site within 800 feet of public housing. The Stanley Isaacs Houses and the John Haynes Homes Tower are 300 feet away from the transfer station. His bill, reintroduced with a different name in 2009, is resting with the rules committee and has not yet been voted on.

Residents also hope that the city will never have the $100 million dollars needed for the transfer station construction.

As it stands, the project funding is now delayed until 2011. If there is a new administration, the next mayor has the power to initiate an amendment to the waste plan that would exclude the 91st Street station.

Although Gifford Miller admires the community’s crusade, he is not overly optimistic about their chances: “I think the community has done everything it could. Sometimes it’s true, you can’t fight City Hall.”

The former Marine Transfer Station