The city has unveiled recycling bins in the Lincoln Square area, with 11 devoted to cardboard and paper, and 11 gathering glass, metal and plastic.
The bins cost $1,050 each and have magnetized doors to make them easier to snap shut closed even if people open them to gather the cans and bottles. They’re designed to be sturdier than most trash cans.
There are now 500 of these cans spread throughout the city, and another 3,500 are set to be placed by April 1.
Photo by Robin.
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$1,050 for a garbage can seems a wee bit ridiculous.
FINALLY!
Thanks be to Mayor de Blasio and/or to whichever agency has decided to bring our city into alignment with other world-class cities, like Barcelona.
That wonderful city proudly sports huge green, blue, and yellow recycling containers all over, or so it seemed from a cursory view from a city bus.
Now, hopefully, the NYC Dept. of Sanitation can get its act together and foster REAL recycling of paper, plastic, glass.
The hard-working porters in our Lincoln Towers building dutifully separate-out recyclables for collection, but one wonders whether DoS sends special trucks for those materials or just dumps them into the usual trash pick-up.
Anyone know?
What are you doing in Barcelona, looking through the window of a bus!! There are large recycling containers in all the cities in Spain… A country with substantially more financial challenges than we have in the US.
They’ve only got these enormously expensive bins in a tiny area near Lincoln Center. The trash that gets thrown all over the streets near 72nd and Broadway; the side streets leading to Columbus Ave, etc is overwhelming and disgusting.
These trash cans are now at 74th and Columbus.
Why do they have to be so brutally ugly?
Because ‘not ugly’ costs $375 more per bin.
Our new mayor needs that cash to help pay for
for one of his moronic initiatives.
Anyone know who I might I call on, some specific that is responsible for this launch? I have a fun do-able idea for local events that would bring attention to this great new addition to the bin options—so that they would actually be used properly, unlike many recycling bins.. These family events could even fundraise for more photogenic bins.
Anyway, bravo De Blasio! (Should he take credit?)
The City’s recycling bins are expensive eye sores. Whether they are the amazingly offensive bright colored behemoths on Brodway or the new less offensive ones at Lincoln Square. They are rarely closed. As a result the internal cans are on the sidewalk and the doors are wide open. For a $1000 plus one would think a working lock would have been included. Who got the contract on this one? Good intentions, perhaps, but the result is less than appealing.
The curbside recycling was decided by the Bloomberg Administration but unfortunately like many Bloomberg policies, little real thought about actual operations and context. Problems include:
1. People just toss garbage in most of the bins, people don’t really try to recycle or properly separate.
2. Bloomberg cut Sanitation pick-up, so for several years now on the West Side and throughout NYC, with more people walking around, the trash & recycling bins fill up very quickly and trash overflows on the street. (Thus more pollution & rodents)
3. On the West Side, new recycling bins seem to have been placed at the bus stop on 66th & Broadway, just adding to the increasing chaos on 66th & Broadway (much chaos resulting from Century 21)
The recycling bins are perfectly nice looking. I wish everyone would stop their complaining.
All we need to do is start issuing fines to those people whom are improperly recycling. This will be a great way for the city to recover the money spent on the bins. It’s 2014, if you still don’t know how to properly recycle, you need to get fined in order to learn. These bins have the potential for being a really good thing. Right now they are just additional garbage cans. It would be great to witness a cop issuing a fine along with recycling instructions helping to educate the ignorant.