12th Jun 2002
Bloomberg vs. Recycling I had
I had to dig to find this story buried on the Time’s web site (tho the issue is getting lots of coverage on WYNC), about how the NY City Council is holding up the city budget, technically due today, because of a stand-off w/ Mayor Bloomberg over recycling. Everything else they’ve agreed on, including putting money back in for teachers and other good things he was trying to cut.
I’ll admit, I didn’t vote in the mayoral election. Green was too much of a weenie and I didn’t know what to think of Bloomberg and was still in a fog after Sept. 11, so I decided to let it slide and accept my fate. I didn’t think either would be so bad. And so far, Bloomberg hasn’t outraged me. He’s presentable, seems reasonable, he takes the subway (supposedly), which is cool.
But I’m totally behind the City Council on this recycling stand-off. Bloomberg was supposed to be the businessman who could fix inefficiency in the system. So he accuses the recycling programs of being inefficient because a sizeable portion of bottles and cans end up in landfills (this Times article doesn’t cite what percentage, but I seem to recall from earlier reports something like 20-30% fall thru the recycling programs). But just axing the program is hardly “fixing” the inefficiencies. That’s penny wise and pound foolish.
Besides, the money to be gained from killing the program is a drop in the bucket: the article says killing recycling would save the city budget $56 million, but the budget deficit is estimated at roughly $5 billion. I empathize with Bloomberg about how difficult his job will be to close that massive and unexpected gap, but killing this program is hardly the answer. I don’t understand why he’s making such a stand on something that is monetarily meaningless in the big picture but symbolically so important.
Regardless of whether there are inefficiencies in the current recycling system, the truth is recycling as we now practice it across this country makes virtually no difference to the rapid deterioration of our environment. It’s not really part of the “sustainable development” movement that preaches a significantly different approach to industry and product development for humans to continue to live in harmony with the planet for several more generations. I nominally subscribe to the sustainability movement, in as much as I think it’s the right idea but have my doubts that it will ever take hold w/ the powers that be. Which is precisely why I think Bloomberg should back off recycling. Not because I believe that it actually makes much difference to the environment, but because it’s symbolic of at least our will to try to do the right thing. If nothing else, sorting your damn papers and cans is one of the simplest balms to assuage liberal guilt.
It’s taken years to get people to even disciplined to do this much. To throw that away is to throw away an important vision of our future.
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