Sanchez questions cost and timeline for city building containerization

Do you have any idea how much it would cost to transition all of the city-owned buildings to stationary on-street containerization?

I think we're trying to work on that estimate as part of the discussions around this bill.

Two things I'll say.

One, we do have to do a waste generation study on a building-by-building basis to determine how many bins each building would need.

And so that's a time-consuming process that, you know, if we were to do it, would take, you know, for the whole city, would take several years.

The second thing is...

But just is there any other methodologies that we could use in order to speed track that timeline?

Yeah, we're using a bunch of different approaches.

We do desktop modeling based on, you know, you can make estimates based on the number of seats in a school, for example, or the number of units in a residential building or the number of meals served.

So we can start from that, but we do have to do the actual detailed waste generation study to make sure that we're putting enough bins there.

Because the last thing we want is to have one bin and then there's a pile of trash sitting next to it because that makes the bin look like it doesn't work.

So we could certainly do that, and we're trying to come up with a reasonable estimate of what the number would be.

of bins would be and therefore the cost for all city buildings.

The other thing I'll say, which I mentioned in my testimony, city buildings are already required to containerize their trash.

Every school sets their trash out in tilt trucks if they don't have some other means of containerization already.

Other city buildings are using NYC bins.

We have a separate contract where city agencies can order NYC bins directly from the vendor, and many city agencies have.

Parks has designed custom waste enclosures that they're using at every park so that there's no longer just piles of bags sort of sitting out by the fence.

So every agency is sort of taking their own approach based on what works for them.

And because we're talking about schools, does that also apply to any of the charter schools as well, or is that solely only for our DOE schools?

It depends on what kind of charter school and what kind of building they're in.

If they're in a private building, then they receive commercial waste collection, so they're covered by commercial waste zones.

If they're in a DOE building, they receive sanitation collection.

If they're in their own building, many of them do receive sanitation collection, but some of them choose to go with a private charter, so it varies pretty widely based on the specifics of the school.

Great, thank you.