History's dustbin: recycling cutbacks.

• Author: Lott, Jeremy
• Position: Citings - Brief Article

To HELP NARROW an ever-widening budget deficit, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg as scaled back his city's curbside recycling program. On July 1 the city stopped collecting plastics and glass. Bloomberg says those collections won't resume until the city can figure out how to do so without hemorrhaging taxpayer cash. The recycling program has cost Big Apple taxpayers as much as half a billion dollars during the last decade.

Bloomberg had wanted to discontinue the collection of metals as well but ultimately compromised with city council members who wanted to increase the resources devoted to recycling. Led by Michael McMahon, several council members proposed that the city add a surcharge to bottles of noncarbonated drinks and start collecting unclaimed deposits, which beverage makers currently get to keep. The estimated $100 million a year generated by these changes would have gone to create a bureaucracy charged with finding a way to make...