Westchester, Explained 10: Talking Trash, Recycling and Why Westchester's Waste Goals Are Paving the Way for a Cleaner Future

As an extension of our weekly "This Week in Westchester - The Podcast" we welcome you to Westchester, Explained. In this special long-form series we take you deeper into the headlines, decisions and policies shaping Westchester County and their impact on your family, your neighborhood and your future. Here we slow it down, dig in and bring in the people doing the work, and we explain not just what the County is doing, but why it matters.

Because government should be clear. This is your County. 

And this is Westchester, Explained. 

On this episode, we’re talking trash -- and recycling -- with Westchester County’s Department of Environmental Facilities. We break down how Westchester became one of the top recycling counties in New York State, why our recycling program is actually working and how residents are helping divert thousands of tons of waste from landfills every year.

From pizza boxes and plastic straws to food scrap composting and textile recycling, we answer some of the biggest recycling questions residents have every day. And as New York pushes toward an ambitious eighty-five percent waste diversion goal -- we’ll explore how Westchester plans to lead the way toward a cleaner, more sustainable future.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hi Westchester. I'm Westchester County Government Communications Director Katherine Chaffee. And as an extension of This Week in Westchester, the podcast, we welcome you to Westchester Explained. On this episode, we're talking trash and recycling with Westchester County's Department of Environmental Facilities. We break down how Westchester became one of the top recycling counties in New York State and why our recycling program is actually working and how residents are helping divert thousands of tons of waste from landfills every year. From pizza boxes and plastic straws to food scraps and textile recycling will answer some of the biggest recycling questions residents have today. And as New York pushes forward, an ambitious 85% waste diversion goal will explore how Westchester plans to lead the way towards a cleaner, more sustainable future. Because this is Westchester explained. So let's begin. Okay, so here we have a very special guest. We have Lou Vitron, who's the first deputy commissioner of the Department of Environmental Facilities. And Lou, we are going to talk about, I think, one of the most beloved topics in Westchester County, which is recycling. We're big recyclers here in Westchester.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

We are. Westchester residents do a phenomenal job recycling, actually. One of the reasons is because recycling has been the law here since 1992. It's not new. But Westchester residents recycle at a rate that is one of the tops in New York State. Every year, our recycling rate in the county is at least 50% or over. And that's compared to a state rate of 43%.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

So, but even more impressive, uh, Catherine, is they uh over the past 20 years, we've reduced residential waste in Westchester County by 27%. So that's 140,000 tons a year. It's a lot of waste.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

So what does that exactly mean that you've reduced it?

SPEAKER_01 2:12

That's a great question. So it's the amount of waste that's act that's actually disposed of, that's thrown out as your garbage. Um we've we keep diverting more and more products, more and more materials out of that waste stream. So that number goes down. And the more we divert, the more, the less um, you know, natural resources are used. We're reusing these materials. We're using them to either recycle them to create new materials, or they're being reused directly, like um vintage clothing shops, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:42

So it's a big thing now.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

It's a huge thing now. You can ask my daughter. So um, yeah, so the more we shave off that waste stream, the better it is. It also saves a lot of money for taxpayers for taxpayers. That's what people don't really understand about recycling. So it costs well over $100 a ton to throw throw garbage out.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

It's very expensive to throw away waste. When you recycle, we actually sell our recyclables in Westchester.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

So this is this always comes up because there are articles in the paper that say that people think they're recycling and they're not recycling. But here in Westchester County, we are recycling. So explain that to everybody.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

We are recycling. So I get this question all the time. So do I. People don't believe me. I don't you know why? Because there's those articles in there's these these articles and uh in the Times and in all over where they're talking about this horror story about recycling. And it's not happening here. It is happening. The articles are true. There, it's happening in other parts of the country. Um, they're unable to get rid of their recycling, and that's for a myriad of different reasons. So we're able to continue to market our recycling and sell it in Westchester. Some municipalities are able to still recycle their material, but they pay to get rid of it. We don't. The only material we pay to recycle is glass because there's not really a robust, reusable glass market in the Northeast. In other parts of the country, they'll use glass. You'll see it in like road projects, you'll that glitter you see on the road. Um, we don't really incorporate glass into construction projects in New York State. But our other materials, we get paid for them. And there's so there's several reasons for that. We're dual stream, and what does that mean? So in Westchester, when you put out your trash, you're putting out not just your garbage, but then you're putting out your pulp recyclables, so your paper and cardboard separately. And then you're also separating out your commingled recyclables. So that's your glass, plastics, metals. By doing it dual stream like that, it keeps the material really clean. So the recyclers want clean material. The cleaner it is, the cheaper it is for them to get it to where they need it to reuse it. So other jurisdictions over the past 20 years or so, so many of them switched over to what's called single stream, where you put all your recycling into the same container. And by doing that, you know, the coke you had left in your Coke bottle gets on the cardboard, the glass breaks, gets embedded in the newspaper. So it really reduces the recyclability of those materials and and the value of them. So that's why we continue to get paid. We also um Let's highlight that one more time.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

We get paid. We get Westchester County gets paid for our recyclable materials.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Just to put uh an accent on that, we we made almost six million dollars last year selling recycles. So people ask me, does that pay for the whole recycling program? No, our recycling program costs more than that. But if you factor in what I spoke about before, if this material was thrown out, it would have cost over $100 a ton to throw it out. So where when you take in the amount of money we're saving by recycling, it's really worth it to recycle and westerns.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

Absolutely. And I remember you saying we have clean recyclable materials here in Westchester. And that's why we get good money for them, which is terrific. Um, you know, let's talk a little bit about what's recyclable, what's not. Um, I think of you literally every time I throw something in the recycling bin. Um pizza boxes, I think of you with that too. So um, what goes what what is what cardboard can be recycled? Let's start there. Obviously, we're all getting a gazillion Amazon boxes every day. Um pizza boxes.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

I'm actually really glad you bring this up because you know, people ask all the time at different uh events that we're at, how well, how can I do more? You know, what can we do with this product or that? Somebody once actually asked me, what do I do with the cardboard dipper on a teabag? Oh gosh. So what you're talking about, this is what we want people to focus on. The big, the, the curbside big market items, right? The the the real traditional curbside recycling. You can put out, so as far as cardboard, all you know, any clean cardboard can go out. And there's different grades of cardboard. There's a fresh box that was just made. And then as things get recycled more and more, um, they're kind of downcycled and they become lesser and lesser products till they get to that um like chipboard that maybe a shoebox is that. You ever rip a shoebox and it's like old, it's almost like dusty. Yeah. It's like feathery. And so that's that's been recycled probably several times. And um, you know, but all of that continues to get thrown in with your cardboard and paper. You can throw newspapers in there, although we don't really get many newspapers anymore.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

And that's a whole other podcast, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:38

When yeah, when I when I started with the county, um, you know, when I started with DEF and I moved over to DEF in two in 2009, we were about 65% newspaper, 35% cardboard. It's more than flipped. It's like 70% cardboard in maybe 15% newspapers, and then other papers. It's really not many newspapers, but all of that can go in. Office paper can go in there. Um, anything that's not contaminated. So when by that I mean if you had paper that was wrapped, you know, wrapped you had a sandwich wrapped in paper or something, um, and there's mayonnaise all over it, that you want to throw out. The pizza box. The pizza box. So the pizza box you can rip off the top, which is usually pretty clean, put that in with your cardboard. If there's, you know, oil stains on the bottom, then you just throw that out.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Why can't you recycle the oil stained bottom?

SPEAKER_01 8:27

So it's just for the recycler, um, it's just not a product that he's gonna, he's gonna have to get that oil taken out of the material. So for him to reuse the cardboard, he's just not gonna be able to do it. Um, as far as the co-angled, so in Westchester, we've expanded our co mangled recycling. So not only can you put in your bottles, your cans, your um, you know, food takeout containers, um, glass, um, metal cans, um, but we also expanded a few years ago to put in cartons. So, what are cartons? Those are aseptic. Um, they so when you get chicken broth, that's in an aseptic container sometimes now. Um, when you get soup, sometimes it's now in those containers. Milk is sometimes in that, especially almond milk. Um, you'll get it'll be in those square aseptic containers. All of that gets thrown in with your co-mangled. Again, we're a little different in Westchester. If you've just moved here, and I know the population is exploding here, I've seen. Um, but um other jurisdictions, they will put that in with their paper and cardboard. We put it in what are commangled, and we do that because a lot of times people will have some residual material in there, and we don't want it contaminating the paper and cardboard and reducing the value.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Got it. What are some things that should definitely never go in the recycling bin?

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Okay. So, you know what? And county executive Ken Jenkins asks me about this all the time. He kids me about this because when he was a legislator, I scolded him about the peanut butter container. So he was asking me about peanut butter containers.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Um wait, the peanut butter jar?

SPEAKER_01 10:00

The peanut butter jar. So it's recyclable, but if you're not gonna clean it out and you're gonna leave all your peanut butter in there, you should throw it out.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Oh, okay. Well, actually that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Yeah. So so things like anything that's contaminated shouldn't go in. I mean, within reason. I you know, i i obviously if there is a drop of water in a bottle, it's fine.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

But it's like a contaminated, meaning like if you have a jar of sauce and maybe there's still some sauce inside. It's contaminated. Yeah. And that needs to be rinsed out. Okay. Um what about this? Was something I didn't know that you taught me. Ceramic. Because I always thought, like, if you broke a mug, I'm like, I don't know, recycle, recycle it.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

No, the ceramic should be. That's a great question, actually. I get that a lot. Ceramic, yeah, no, that shouldn't go in with the recyclables. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

What about straws? Plastic straws. Hot topic.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

You know, we pass we passed the single-use plastic law in Westchester, um, which I'm one of the first jurisdictions to do that.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Um let's tell everybody what that is, real quick.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Sure. So um it's it's by the by request law, right? So when you go and do when you're taking out at a restaurant um now in Westchester, you need to request if you want a fork, a spoon. And they're not supposed to give you just a packet of materials anymore. It should be by request. Same thing with stirrers and straws, all your single-use plastic items. Um, as far as straws, it's very difficult at a MERF. What's a MIRF? A MIRF is a material recovery facility where we process all the recycling. And our MIRF in in Westchester is in Yonkers. We process all the recent.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Right now to steal Leonard's. No, you can't miss it. You can't miss it.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

We process all our residential from the district. That's most of the county. Night over 90% of the population lives in the district. Um, we process all the recycling there. The straws, unfortunately, are so narrow that they fall through the conveyors and the material. And we have, you know, we continually upgrade the MRF with new technology. We have optical sorters, uh, we have robotic equipment now uh that picks out and as well as workers who who hand separate as well. Um the straws, though, they're they're just anything. So with the way we we say anything smaller than a credit card is really not going to get picked up in the Murph as a recyclable item. So what happens with the straw? It falls through, falls through the conveyors, gets swept up, and then we have to put it in the garbage.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

So uh we do get a lot of them in the recycling. People put them in. It's it's called wish cycling. It's plastic. Why wouldn't you recycle it? I get it. Um, you know, and this is why people sometimes get confused, get mad. You're like, you told me to put all my plastics in there. But you the really tiny items, um, they're really they're gonna fall through. And that's why that single-use plastic law is so important. If we can reduce those small plastic items, uh, it really goes a long way towards reducing the waste stream as well.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

Terrific. So Westchester is doing an incredible job recycling. Um, but there is a state goal. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Sure. So, yeah, New York State set this incredibly ambitious goal of reaching 85% diversion from the waste stream by the year 2050. Um, we think we are well situated to meet those goals. We're gonna do it. We're gonna do it. It's gonna take a lot of help. Um, so I said, you know, as as great as we do, and I was bragging about us earlier, um, you know, and last year we posted, I think, a 54% recycling rate, which is in the region is phenomenal. There's definitely room for improvement. We worked with Stonebrook University, and um, oh my God, these poor kids from Stoneybrook, they went out there and they took garbage and hand sorted it for three days in our MERF and our gar and our transfer stations. And what they what they realized is that as great as Westchester does, right, one of the best in the state, one of the best in the region, 20% of the material that goes in our garbage is recyclable.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

So that's the low-hanging fruit, right? And that's education. It's getting, and we work on education all the time. It's getting boots on the ground, getting people out there. It's making materials that you guys help us with in communications, right? In multilingual materials and getting it to the people and how do you recycle and what you should recycle. It's also um targeting different things. So we did a study to help us, you know, figure out how we're gonna get to this goal. We did a waste reduction study, um, and it laid out it's basically gonna be we worked with Barton LeJudis, uh, a multidisciplinary consulting firm. And this waste reduction study is gonna really be our roadmap to getting from where we are now, really great position we're now, to getting to that 85%. Some of the things we can start doing right away, and that's like reaching out to multifamily housing. Recycling is always lower in multifamily housing than it is in single-family homes. And that's for a lot of different reasons. Um, a lot of times buildings just don't have the spatial requirements for the bins that they need.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

It's a lot of bins. You can understand that.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

A lot of bins. Um, management companies sometimes aren't based in Westchester. They don't know the rules and the laws. They should. Um, and that's, you know, we need to get together with them to make sure that they are um doing the right thing. And we do have enforcement. We do have inspectors that go out. And it's also um it's anonymous recycling in a building.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

It is.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

So you don't have the peer pressure of, you know, my neighbor never puts out recycling, you know, when someone's right next to you because you're going out, you're putting it down the bin, or you're going downstairs into the basement. So it it when it's anonymous, it's gonna be a lower recycling rate too. So for all of those reasons, it's lower in in apartment buildings. And we have urban areas in Westchester, right? We're very diverse uh county. So we're gonna, one of the recommendations, there were 10 recommendations in the study, was to develop a multifamily housing recycling program. And that's what we're doing right now. We have uh we have new people on staff who are gonna be doing public outreach. We are putting together a public outreach campaign. We're reaching out to management companies, to landlords. We're gonna start offering friendly audits to apartment buildings, businesses in the county. So that's one of the one of the recommendations. That's one of the things one of the steps. So those are the things we can start doing right now. There are also recommendations that are gonna take more than less gesture. It's gonna take state action. Excuse me. And on that level, there's expend extended producer responsibility laws. And these laws um basically they take the burden off of municipalities for recycling, hard to recycle products and materials, and put it on the manufacturers. And, you know, um County Executive Jenkins and Westchester, we've supported these laws in the past. We're gonna continue to support these laws, but it's gonna take state action. And one of the big ones touches on what you you talked about earlier: extended producer responsibility for packaging. So you order a couple of things from Amazon or any, you know, any online company, you know it's gonna come in a big box, right? And then there's gonna be a bunch of little boxes inside of that box. They're gonna have bubble wrap separating out the boxes. Then you're gonna open those little boxes. They might have styrofoam in there or some other. There's an incredible amount of packaging that ends up in our trash. And if we can get extended producer responsibility that, you know, meaningful laws that address packaging and put the burden back on the manufacturers for this, not only will it probably reduce the amount of packaging, it'll probably also make that packaging, they'll start making it out of more recyclable products. Right if they are responsible for recycling it or for covering the costs.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

You know, it's interesting because a a a big part of recycling, you know, I I grew up when New York City was first recycling and it was a big deal. I mean, we learned about it. And school is a huge deal. So I feel like I've grown up in the recycling world. Um, and I think a big part of it for me personally is consuming less, less packaging, to your point, less boxes, less packaging. If I'm in a store and there are two products and one is packaged smaller with less packaging than another, I'll buy the one that has less packaging. Personally, I don't want to deal with all that packaging. And also, to your point, it's a waste, right? To have all of this plastic, all of this paper, all of this cardboard. Is, you know, you mentioned this a little bit in the beginning. Is part of this also part of this education, part of this effort, just consuming less?

SPEAKER_01 18:19

That is a great point. Um, and one of one of that's that's a major component of our education campaign, right? It's making informed decisions um when you're purchasing. And one of the things we've done to try to um assist people, like when you said, when you're out at the store and you're looking at different products, we have the county offers a recycling app free to our residents, right? So not only does it keep you up to date on recycling laws and changes in recycling and events, recycling events we do, like household recycling days and things like that. It's always ahead. Oh, right. It also um has a um it's it's a photo component where you can take a photo of a product and it will tell you if the material that it's packaged in is recyclable or not. So you can go on our website to find out more about the app. That's um environment.westchestercounty ny.gov um and find out about all of our programs, frankly. But you're so right. Um we're not gonna make meaningful change until we start, you know, making more informed decisions when we're actually buying products as well.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um one two uh two recycling things that we didn't mention and we should mention quickly is the uh food scrap recycling and the um textile recycling.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Can you explain those two?

SPEAKER_01 19:41

Absolutely. So we have a very robust food scrap recycling program in Westchester. It's the residential food scrap transportation and disposal program. I really wish we came up with a better acronym when we started. It's RoughStead. Um, but so under that program, um, we assist municipalities with their local food scrap recycling programs. So most so many of the municipalities in Westchester have voluntary drop-off programs. We subsidize the cost of transport to a compost facility and the cons and the composting so that it doesn't cost the municipality any more than than throwing away garbage. And actually, if they reach a certain threshold, it's cheaper than than throwing things out. So um we we did that to incentivize the food scrap recycling, and it's really worked. We do over 1,100 tons a year of food scraps. Um we also have the composted facility in Valhalla that is a working compost site. We do that run by DEF. We compost two tons of food waste a week at that facility. We get the material from food banks throughout Westchester, and then the compost we create, we provide to community gardens, to the parks department for their farms. And um, you know, it it's just uh it's it's an excellent program. And we do giveaway events as well. So we give it back to the to the residents, but we use it as a demonstration site, and it's been successful because White Plains, City of White Plains, came, saw it, said, you know what, we can do this ourselves. And that's exactly what we want. Because the more local you can do it, the less greenhouse gas you have from transporting it. Uh the more local you can ever do recycling, the better. And food scraps more than anything, right? So they're doing their own program. They moved it in-house. We don't, we don't subsidize anything anymore because they're doing it all themselves. Um, and and they're really a great success story to look at, White Plains, because um it's they have a robust program going. So that's what we want Ruthstead to be. We want municipalities to come there, look at, and say, how can I incorporate this in my own town, village, city? Um, as far as textiles, um, we're really excited that we offer curbside textile collection now in Westchester. So for participating municipalities, and again, you can go on our website to find out. Your municipality participates or just reach out to your own municipality. I think there are 24 or 25 participating now out of the county's 43 municipalities. So we have a good participation rate. If you're a resident in one of those municipalities, you can just sign up for a pickup. And we have we have a vendor who will come right to your curb, pick up uh textiles. And that is something that can significantly move the needle as well, because textiles make up the federal um uh approximation is about 8% of the the uh waste trim.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

That's a whole fast fashion.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

That's a whole that's a whole area. And um, yeah, no, that's I I'm I'm proud that Westchester is is doing this and we're we're leading the way. This is very, very exciting. So so the bottom line is there's tons of things that to recycle. There's some things we can't recycle. We're we're gonna we're we're not wish cycling, we're just gonna put it in the regular trash. Um, but Westchester is doing really well and we're gonna do better.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Absolutely. And you know, it's it's really a testament to our residents. They do a fantastic job, and um, we're really excited, you know, it's a challenge, the 85%. I mean, that's uh that's we're gonna do it.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

We're gonna do it.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

But we we think we can get there. Um, you know, the residents, I'm sure, are on board, and we're definitely on board at DEF.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Okay. If anybody has any questions about recycling, recycle, recycling programs in their community, who should they contact?

SPEAKER_01 23:21

Absolutely. So we have a recycling hotline. So uh 914-813-5425. Any questions you have about recycling, um, you can you can call the recycling hotline, or you can go on our website at environment.westchestercounty ny.gov.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Terrific. Thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

Thank you.