Five years ago, the City Council and Mayor Bill de Blasio passed major legislation promising to reform New York City’s private sanitation system—an industry notorious for worker exploitation, dumping waste in outer-borough environmental justice communities, confusing or nonexistent recycling services, unsafe trucks and driving practices, and poor customer service.
With the impending transition to a federal government opposed to environmental justice, climate, and worker safety programs, new Sanitation Commissioner Jimmy Oddo and Mayor Eric Adams can make immediate, concrete progress on the City’s environmental justice, climate, and public safety goals by fully implementing the citywide Commercial Waste Zones (CWZ) program mandated by Local Law 199 of 2019.
This new system aims to change the rules of a long-running game in which waste haulers have been incentivized to engage in a “race to the bottom,” cutting corners on wages, safety, environmental rules, and customer service as thousands of trucks zig-zag the city, working long overnight routes and competing to collect the massive piles of garbage set out by businesses ranging from grocery stores to offices and hospitals.
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