515 Edgecombe Cooperative

[This post is based on the arti­cle by grownyc.org]

Around 40% of NYC’s waste can be recy­cled through the curb­side recy­cling pro­gram.

Recy­clable Paper
Near­ly a quar­ter of NYC’s waste is recy­clable paper! Be sure to recy­cle all clean paper. Reduce your car­bon foot­print fur­ther by tak­ing your name off of mass mail­ing lists, reduc­ing cat­a­log waste, opt­ing out of offers for cred­it cards and insur­ance and stop­ping unwant­ed tele­phone books–learn how at NYCWaste­Less.

Met­al & Met­al Appli­ances
Recy­cle cans, clean alu­minum foil and “most­ly met­al” house­hold items with at least 50% met­al con­tent. Bulky met­al such as shelves and appli­ances should be placed next to your recy­cling bins or bags on recy­cling day (call 311 first for appli­ances that require CFC removal such as air con­di­tion­ers and refrig­er­a­tors). Con­serve even more resources by donat­ing reusable met­al items. For exam­ple, bikes and bike parts can be used by Recy­cle a Bicy­cle or Time’s UP! to get more New York­ers on two wheels.

Con­tain­er Glass
Unbro­ken bot­tles and jars are recy­clable through NYC’s curb­side recy­cling pro­gram. Emp­ty and rinse con­tain­ers and remove, then recy­cle, met­al caps and lids. Recy­cle nat­ur­al corks with Cork Rehar­vest using bins locat­ed at Whole Foods mar­kets in NYC.

Rigid Plas­tics
As of April 23, 2013, New York­ers can recy­cle all rigid plas­tics, includ­ing yogurt cups, plas­tic toys, sal­ad con­tain­ers, sham­poo bot­tles, plas­tic fur­ni­ture and plas­tic appli­ances.  Learn more.

Bev­er­age Car­tons
Gable-top and asep­tic con­tain­ers (think O.J., milk, soy milk and box­es of soup stock) are includ­ed in the City’s recy­cling pro­gram. Rinse and place with your glass, met­al and plas­tic recy­clables.

Tex­tiles
Mate­ri­als such as old cloth­ing and linens rep­re­sent almost 6% of NYC’s waste. Recy­cle your unwant­ed tex­tiles at one of GrowNYC’s week­ly tex­tile col­lec­tions at select Green­mar­kets. Large apart­ment build­ings can sign up for an in-build­ing pro­gram through Wear­able Col­lec­tions or Refash­ioNYC. If your run­ning shoes are worn com­plete­ly, you can also recy­cle them through the Reuse-a-Shoe pro­gram, which makes them into ath­let­ic sur­faces.

Yard Waste
4% of the res­i­den­tial waste in our con­crete jun­gle actu­al­ly comes from yards and green spaces. If you’re lucky enough to have a patch of grass, leave it on the lawn after mow­ing. Col­lect fall leaves for com­post and be sure to con­tact the Parks Depart­ment for prop­er removal of any tree prun­ings and oth­er organ­ic woody debris if you live in Brook­lyn, Man­hat­tan, Queens or Stat­en Island.

Food Waste
Why let your food scraps go to waste? There are sev­er­al local pro­grams offer­ing com­post­ing to turn your cof­fee grounds, veg­etable trim­mings and oth­er organ­ic mate­ri­als into “black gold” to fer­til­ize flow­ers, veg­eta­bles and trees sans harm­ful chem­i­cals. 35 of GrowNYC’s Green­mar­kets now accept res­i­den­tial kitchen scraps for com­post­ing. Click here to find oth­er com­mu­ni­ty drop-off sites. You can also learn to make your own com­post at home. Vis­it NYC Waste­Less for more resources.

For food that is still edi­ble, check out this handy inter­ac­tive map from the NYC Coali­tion Against Hunger to find a soup kitchen or food pantry near you. Large vol­umes of canned food can be donat­ed through the Food Bank for NYC. Con­tact City Har­vest for infor­ma­tion on donat­ing large amounts of fresh, per­ish­able and pre­pared food.

Oth­er Paper
Cer­tain types of paper such as tis­sues, nap­kins, food-soiled paper, lam­i­nat­ed papers, cups, plates, and take-out con­tain­ers are not recy­clable in NYC. Reduce your use of sin­gle-use, dis­pos­able items and com­post food-soiled nap­kins and paper tow­els that are free of tox­ic clean­ers or oth­er harm­ful chem­i­cals.

Oth­er Plas­tic
New York­ers dis­card near­ly 2,000 tons of plas­tic bags every week, not to men­tion the ones that land in trees and sew­ers rather than the trash recep­ta­cle. The key is to reduce your use of plas­tic bags.  Use bags a sec­ond time for shop­ping, tak­ing out the trash, or clean­ing up after the dog.  Clean and dry bags can be recy­cled at large retail stores and chains around the city, thanks to a recent law that requires recy­cling of plas­tic film such as shop­ping bags, dry clean­ing bags and news­pa­per bags.  Look for ways to reduce Sty­ro­foam waste by bring­ing your own to-go cup, buy­ing wise­ly at the super­mar­ket and ask­ing restau­rants to use alter­na­tive pack­ag­ing.

Con­struc­tion and Demo­li­tion (C&D)
Reduce and reuse when you ren­o­vate. Save mon­ey by buy­ing from and donat­ing to NYC’s build­ing mate­ri­als reuse cen­ter, Build It Green!. Vis­it their web­site to view the inven­to­ry of items like cab­i­nets, doors, appli­ances, paint and even decon­struc­tion ser­vices.

Elec­tron­ics
Although they are a small por­tion of the waste stream by vol­ume, com­put­ers and elec­tron­ics con­tribute about 70% of the heavy met­als in land­fills. Con­sid­er donat­ing work­ing elec­tron­ics. If bro­ken, there are many recy­cling oppor­tu­ni­ties for these items. Find upcom­ing col­lec­tion days on our Recy­cling Events page, vis­it Take It Back NYC for info on man­u­fac­tur­er and retail recy­cling at loca­tions such as Best Buy, Sta­ples and Good­will stores.  Recy­cling is eas­i­er than ever with the Low­er East Side Ecol­o­gy Center’s new e‑waste drop-off ware­house in the Gowanus sec­tion of Brook­lyn.  As of April 1, 2011, New York State Law requires man­u­fac­tur­ers of many elec­tron­ics to col­lect their prod­ucts from res­i­dents at no charge. Be pre­pared for 2015, when cer­tain elec­tron­ics will be pro­hib­it­ed from res­i­den­tial trash.

Cell phones are easy to recy­cle, due to a NY State law requir­ing any store sell­ing cell phones to take them back for recy­cling. You can also recy­cle or refur­bish your old phone for a cause through many char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions.

Recy­cle CDs, flop­py disks, VHS tapes, etc. by pur­chas­ing a Tech­no­trash bin from Green Disk or recy­cle select media at Best Buy.

House­hold Haz­ardous Waste (HHW)
Most of NYC’s HHW con­sists of dry cell bat­ter­ies and water-based paints & adhe­sives, but also includes oil fil­ters, antifreeze, wet cell bat­ter­ies, motor oil, fuel, mer­cury wastes, oil-based sol­vents, paint, pes­ti­cides and fire extin­guish­ers. When­ev­er pos­si­ble, avoid buy­ing harm­ful mate­ri­als that cre­ate dis­pos­al haz­ards. Learn more about reduc­ing tox­ins in your waste.

The NYC Depart­ment of Sanitation’s Spe­cial Waste Drop-Off Sites accept house­hold and auto­mo­tive bat­ter­ies, flu­o­res­cent bulbs, mer­cury ther­mome­ters and ther­mostats, motor oil, trans­mis­sion flu­id, latex paint and pas­sen­ger car tires.  In Spring 2013, DSNY’s NYC SAFE Dis­pos­al events will accept elec­tron­ics and oth­er poten­tial­ly harm­ful house­hold prod­ucts like bat­ter­ies, paint, pes­ti­cides and med­i­cine.  

Recharge­able bat­ter­ies are pro­hib­it­ed from house­hold garbage and must be recy­cled. NYC stores must recy­cle the same type of recharge­able bat­ter­ies that they sell. Cell phones and their bat­ter­ies can be returned to any store that sells these mobile devices. Select Green­mar­kets have col­lec­tion bins for cell phones and recharge­able bat­ter­ies or you can vis­it www.RBRC.org to get a bin for your apart­ment build­ing.

Com­pact Flu­o­res­cent Light bulbs (CFLs) save ener­gy and last much longer, but con­tain mer­cury and should be dis­posed of respon­si­bly. Get more info on light bulb recy­cling and find a drop-off site at www.grownyc.org/CFL.

Some local mem­bers and part­ners of the Nation­al Com­mu­ni­ty Phar­ma­cists Asso­ci­a­tion accept phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals for safe dis­pos­al. For more infor­ma­tion on safe han­dling of house­hold med­ical wastes vis­it NYC WasteLe$$.
Mis­cel­la­neous Inor­gan­ics and Non-Recy­clable Glass
Reuse old win­dows (see C&D), mir­rors and unwant­ed ceram­ics where pos­si­ble.

Fur­ni­ture
Many thrift stores and non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions can help pro­vide good homes for unwant­ed fur­ni­ture. Search by bor­ough, zip code or find city­wide list­ings using NYC Stuff Exchange. You can also look for tak­ers through Craigslist.org and Freecycle.org.