NYC Apartment Building Recycling Initiative

“How To” at 1192 Park Avenue 

Marcia Fowle 

The trash/recycling area on my floor at 1192 Park is just a hop, skip, and jump from my apartment. I don’t have to go outside to the sidewalk with my bundled up and separated trash. I don’t have to drive to a town dump and sort on the spot. Just a few feet from my back door are designated receptacles where I leave my family’s trash and recycling, and it is also the place where my neighbors leave theirs. 

My neighbors and I are confused. We pretty much agree on what mixed paper and cardboard is recycled, and place it into its own container. And we probably agree on non-recyclables that go into the trash-only or “everything else” container lined with a black plastic bag. But what goes into the blue recycling container lined with its distinct clear plastic bag? 

CIVITAS Directors Gorman Reilly and Marcia Fowle with William Waldren, Jr. (1192 Park Avenue Superintendent) and Eve Martinez (DSNY Outreach Specialist). 

All glass jars and jugs; that seems easy. All metals, including hangers, tin foil, and bulk metal; that’s straightforward. All beverage cartons and drink boxes, also fairly easy. But what about plastics? I see all sorts of plastics being tossed into this blue bin from yogurt and deli containers to plastic cups. 

What if my neighbors and I are putting in the wrong plastics? Is it up to our building staff to make sure that this recycling stream is in compliance with the Department of Sanitation (DSNY) rules by sorting through the bin’s contents? I think not; it’s up to each resident. It’s our waste; we should be responsible for disposing of it properly. 

The DSNY is giving us a helping hand through the Apartment Building Recycling Initiative (ABRI), and 1192 Park has signed on. In just one meeting with Outreach Specialist Eve Martinez, our building has made a giant step forward. We learned where we could make improvements in clarifying which items are recycled, especially which plastics, and have ordered new signage to be placed floor by floor in our trash/recycling areas. Each shareholder will receive DSNY’s informative static-cling decal for placement in his apartment, so when in doubt, he can refer to it easily. 

ABRI and Ms. Martinez are scheduling meetings with 1192’s staff and shareholders to discuss not only recycling but also disposal of electronic equipment and safe handling of harmful waste, such as fluorescent bulbs and batteries. In the spring, 1192 hopes to set up a clothing drop-off bin for pickup by the New York Housing Works. Visit www.nyc.gov/refashion for information about this program. 

Now, thanks to ABRI, my neighbors and I will be clear about which plastics to recycle. We used to look for the number. Was it #1 or #2, which the city used to recycle or was it #6, which the city did not? The DSNY has simplified the rules. Plastic jugs and bottles (without caps) with necks smaller than the body of the containers, no matter what the number, are to be put in the blue recycle bin – NO OTHER PLASTICS. New signage will help. 

Ask your apartment building manager and co-op president to follow 1192 Park’s lead by signing up with ARBI and learning how to waste less. 

To learn more about ABRI, contact CIVITAS at (212) 996-0745 or visit: http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwasteless/html/recycling/abri.shtml

To read the complete spring 2013 issue of CIVITAS News, visit http://civitasnyc.org/civitas-newsletters/

2013 Benefit Honorees

Willa Hutner 

Adrian Benepe and Edith Kean 

On March 6, Adrian Benepe and Edith Kean will receive the CIVITAS August Heckscher Award for Community Service. Both honorees share important attributes; they love parks and came to a city of parks in a state of disrepair. Both restored the places they love to a state nobody imagined possible. For both, parks are not only places of beauty; they have the power to create community. 

 Adrian Benepe became a City Park Ranger after college, and held a succession of positions with the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, including wetlands restoration and conservation of monuments and historic house museums. He spent some years at the New York Botanical Garden and with the Municipal Art Society, and then returned to NYC Parks and Recreation as Manhattan Borough Commissioner. In 2002 Mayor Bloomberg appointed Adrian Commissioner of Parks and Recreation. In that office, he expanded the NYC park system with the addition of a restored Randall’s Island, the High Line, and Brooklyn Bridge Park, as well as setting up new standards for sustainable park design. He recently become Senior Vice President for City Park Development for the Trust for Public Land and he continues to run, walk, bicycle and cross-country ski in Central and Riverside Parks and throughout the city’s park system. 

Edie Kean started public gardening shortly after she received a landscape design degree from the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, by beautifying the Park Avenue Mall where she lived. When the Department of General Services set up GreenThumb to take over the cleaning up of abandoned buildings in low income neighborhoods in the late 1970s, she became its landscape designer. The city offered applicants lumber, posts, wire, topsoil, tools and plant material; Edie put the community’s dreams on paper. The abandoned properties became community centers: vegetable and flower gardens, clubhouses, and party sites. When the city moved to give the sites to developers, the environmental community rose up in opposition. They sued in court, and they won. Now many of these parks are under the aegis of the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation. Edie has also been active on the Board of the Bronx Botanical Garden, and serves on the board of the Friends of Fort Tryon Park. When there is a greening community effort, she’s out there, drafting others to the cause, raising money, and moving others to action with her passion. 

Honorary Chairs Joan K. Davidson and Dan Brodsky

The 2013 Benefit’s honorary chairmen are Joan K. Davidson and Dan Brodsky. Joan is president of Furthermore grants in publishing, and president emeritus of the J.M. Kaplan Fund. She is on many boards in New York, and in 2008 was Chairman of the Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Quadricentennial Commission. In recognition of her service to New York, Joan received CIVITAS’s August Heckscher award in 2011. Dan is the senior partner of the Brodsky Organization, which recently built the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College on East 119th Street. Dan is on many non-profit boards in New York, and is chairman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

To read the complete spring 2013 issue of CIVITAS News, visit http://civitasnyc.org/civitas-newsletters/