Sanchez and Anderson discuss business textile waste and commercial waste characterization
Sanchez asks about business compliance with textile rules given businesses produce roughly 10% of textile waste. Anderson says DSNY lacks good data on commercial textile recovery but hopes a future commercial waste characterization study after commercial waste zones rollout will provide insights.
I'm curious, so businesses produce roughly like 10% of the textile waste stream, and so how have you seen businesses comply with some of these rules?
Yeah, so I think that's a space that we haven't done a lot of measurement in.
There is, I would say, a pretty robust industry around the reuse of textiles, particularly from the fashion industry.
And so I think that that exists, but we don't have great data on how much material is actually being recovered and how much material is ending up in the waste stream.
I think this is a space where, you know, when we're able to do another,
or not another, but really a first commercial waste characterization study at some point in the future after commercial waste zones is fully rolled out, we'll have a much better understanding of
how much textiles there are in the waste stream, where they're coming from, what the condition is at the time of disposal, and really be able to dive into programs around that.
And, you know, this is an area that in the swamp, which we hope to finalize in the coming months, we have a number of initiatives around this specific topic.