Where does your trash go?

Does anything thrown away in the city’s subway system get recycled? Metro talked to Mike Zacchea, assistant chief operations officer for New York City Transit, to find out. Despite the fact that there are no recycling bins, some of it does. 

Photo: NED GUTHRIE/FLICKR

 

[2] RAIL TO ROAD: When garbage trains reach the end of the line, the dumpsters are emptied into trucks run by Metropolitan Paper Recycling, which haul the garbage to a mechanized sorting plant in New Jersey.

Photo: WWW.METROPAPERRECYCLING.COM

 

[3] RECYCLING:  Last year, NYC Transit recycled nearly 50 percent of the garbage it collected — 8,900 tons. In an “ideal world,” if papers weren’t splattered with ketchup and coffee rinds, up to 75 percent would be recycled, Zacchea said.

Photo: GETTY IMAGES

 

[4] NO SPECIAL BINS: Transit doesn’t use recycling bins. If it did a lot of people would throw recyclables in the regular trash anyway and regular trash would not be sorted, Zacchea said. Putting more cans and pickups in the subway system while running trains 24/7 would be a challenge, he added.


[5] SAVINGS: Transit saves $80 for every ton of trash it recycles. The non-
recyclables are shipped to landfills in Virginia and Pennsylvania. 

 

AMY ZIMMER

 

Heavy metal recycling

Besides paper, NYC Transit recycles: metal, glass, used motor oil, entire subway cars. Old cars that are taken out of service are stripped, cleaned and turned into ocean reefs. 

Photo: STEPH MATTHEWS/FLICKR

Source: metro.us