Anderson discusses 2026 Solid Waste Management Plan and current diversion efforts

More recently, we've created the largest mandatory curbside composting program in the nation to collect compostable material, food scraps, yard waste, food soil, paper,

so we can turn it into finished compost or into renewable energy, far, far better than shipping it to landfills hundreds of miles away.

As we continue our work to create a more circular economy, we are in the process of finalizing our 2026 Solid Waste Management Plan, or SWAMP for short, a 10-year plan designed to guide the future of resource recovery in our city.

We remain on track to complete the plan this year, and we look forward to continued engagement with the City Council regarding its completion and implementation.

The New York City Department of Sanitation collects and processes 24 million pounds of trash, recycling, and compost, and compostable material, every day.

And for many decades, one of our goals has been to put as much of this material to beneficial reuse as possible.

What items can achieve beneficial use, though, changes with technological development and with the shifting markets.

There are also formal and informal exchanges of used and unwanted goods in thrift stores, on WhatsApp chats, and at stoops that ensure that products with value stay in circulation well beyond just one initial use.

In our experience at DSNY, recovering value from waste has worked best when the public sector and private sector come together to make investments in sustainable processes and facilities to support waste diversion.

The Staten Island Compost Facility was built by the City of New York, and much of its operation is handled by a private contractor.

We process millions of pounds of food waste and yard waste there every year, keeping that material out of landfills and producing valuable compost, which we both sell and give away to New Yorkers.

Likewise, the Sunset Park Materials Recovery Facility is built on city land, which was improved with city capital funds, but the facility itself was built and is operated by a private sector partner.

And nowhere is the value of these public-private investments in the circular economy clearer than at the Pratt Industries paper mill on Staten Island.

Thanks to tens of millions in private and public investment, when you throw away a newspaper or a cardboard box in your green recycling bin in Manhattan today,

it will be barged to Staten Island to become a pizza box sold potentially in Brooklyn next week.

And that's recycling at work.