The NYC Department of Sanitation is the worlds largest, collecting over 12,000 tons of waste every day- that is not including all of NYC's commercial waste picked up by private carting companies (about 13,000 tons every day) [1]. As of June 30, 2011, there were 12,460 intersections with traffic signals citywide [2]. Since the first listed Public Space Recycling Bins were introduced in 2007, [as of May 5, 2014] there are a total of 1,421 Paper and 1,395 MGP Public Space Recycling Bins [3] (usually adjacent to each other). Therefore, if we only count the intersections with traffic signals, AND we use the [higher] figure for Paper bins (which includes not only intersections but bins in Parks, Subway stations, etc.)- the percentage of intersections that have Public Space Recycling Bins is less than 12 percent (and probably considerably less if we count all intersections and not include the bins in parks, etc.). It took us 7 years to get to less than 12 percent- I hope we can speed that up. The nyc.gov webpage states that "The Department of Sanitation’s comprehensive study of residential and street basket waste looked at the contents of street basket waste, finding that over 40% consisted of materials that could be recycled. However, because street baskets contain such a small fraction of NYC’s overall waste (around 1%), even if it were possible to recycle all these materials, it won’t make a difference in the amount of waste going to disposal (40% of 1% = 0.4%)" [4]. Even if this is accurate, 0.4% of 12,000 tons of waste per day is 48 tons of waste that could otherwise be recycled every day (17,520 tons per year)- that sounds to me like it would indeed, make a difference, and seems to be relatively easy to implement. We can try to tackle the other percentage of waste separately- hopefully more widespread public space recycling would set a good example and help to develop more conscientious disposal practices in residences and organizations as people realize that some small steps and negligible inconveniences from each of us can have an immensely positive impact on the future of our planet and lives of our children.

1. ^ http://www.nyc.gov/html/dsny/html/about/about.shtml#.U7nusV5KsXs,

2. ^ http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/infrastructure/signals.shtml

3. ^ http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwasteless/downloads/pdf/psr-reports/PSR_SITELIST.pdf

4.^ http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwasteless/html/recycling/publicspace.shtml#street_corners