Councilmember Santosuosso questions DSNY on textile recycling participation barriers
Santosuosso asks why buildings reject textile bins and about incentives for participation. Kitchener cites stairs and space as barriers and mentions exploring smaller containers. Santosuosso notes no Helpsy drop-off sites in Bay Ridge and asks about incentives like sanitation credits. Anderson suggests continuing nonprofit donations for tax write-offs and offers to brainstorm creative incentives.
Thank you, Chair.
Always repping Hunt's point.
Good morning.
Thank you for being here.
I just have a few questions.
Mostly on textiles.
When you do your outreach to the residential buildings about potentially taking on a bin, what are some of the reasons that the buildings reject it?
Yeah, so I mean, I think the selling point to having the bin is that, you know, the laundry rooms and basements of a lot of these buildings are like kind of full of textiles anyway, and it's a mess.
And having the bin, you know, makes it cleaner, it's tidier.
And so a lot of the building supers really appreciate that.
Some of the challenges are like potentially having stairs can be a problem sometimes if there's not an elevator to get the bin down there.
And then space is the other thing.
And we've actually done some research and totally open to ideas around another container besides the bin, something smaller.
So that's definitely something that we're looking at and continuing to explore.
Okay.
When I first heard, I think it was on a Zoom call that I first heard about the textile recycling program.
I didn't know it existed.
And I have since, well, I know there are some buildings in Bay Ridge that have them in the residential buildings, but we actually have no, I looked on the map recently, we have no drop-off sites through the HelpSee partner.
So I'm just thinking of ways to try to encourage people to participate in the residential program or have some of these bins in the more public sites.
Are there incentives that you can think of?
I understand HelpSee is not a nonprofit, so there's no sort of tax write-off.
Are there, is there a possibility of like a sanitation credit that could be applied against future fines and fees?
Or is there some other incentive that you can think of that could encourage participation?
Yeah, I think that's a very interesting question.
You can, if you donate your textiles through Goodwill, Housing Works, Salvation Army, many other thrift stores that are nonprofits, you can still claim that tax write-off.
So I'd encourage you, I'd encourage all New Yorkers that if that's a priority for them, that they should continue to do that.
But certainly, you know, we can work with you on thinking about new creative incentives for how to encourage that kind of behavior.
Do you know how many city-owned buildings have the textile recycling bins?
It's in the report that there are some in schools.
Yeah, I don't have those numbers in front of me.
There are a few in schools, and we, of course, have them in our sanitation offices.
Okay, great.