Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
Q&A
Discussion on rising costs of waste export in New York City
0:26:41
·
3 min
Council Member Brannan inquires about the rising costs of waste export in New York City. DSNY officials explain the current expenditure, factors contributing to cost increases, and the impact of waste reduction initiatives.
- Total export expenditures for FY 2025 are $495 million
- Factors affecting costs include inflation, contractual price adjustments, and overall tonnage increases
- Composting initiatives have shown promising results in reducing refuse weights
Justin Brannan
0:26:41
Thank you commissioner.
0:26:43
I wanna ask a few questions about the rising costs of waste export.
0:26:52
Could you tell us what is the sanitation department's annual expenditure on waste export and does this compare to waste export costs over the past five years?
0:27:31
And beyond inflation and contractual price adjustments, what other factors contribute to the increase in those costs?
0:27:47
Overall what?
0:27:55
What do the terms of DSNY's long term waste export contracts impact current and future budget projections?
0:28:32
Have any of the waste reduction initiatives helped lower those costs?
0:28:39
Yeah.
0:29:06
Has the solid waste management plan's reliance on borough based waste management facilities impacted the overall cost of waste export?
Javier Lojan
0:27:23
So the total export expenditures for FY 2025 is $495,000,000
0:27:44
The only thing that would increase that would be overall tonnage increases.
0:27:48
Overall tonnage increases.
0:28:05
I'll pass it to Deputy Commissioner Antonelli for that.
0:28:42
So as I mentioned in my testimony, the increase in composting material diverted has helped reduce some of those costs.
0:28:52
So we're only in the first full month since it became mandatory, but it's we're seeing some promising weights increase in organics weights and then we've seen decreases in in refuse weights as well.
Joseph Antonelli
0:28:08
The terms of the contract, the only thing that's variable in there, again, you mentioned, was whether there are adjustments for inflation.
0:28:17
That's really the only variable cost in there because we have the you know, there's three inputs.
0:28:21
There's the fixed costs, which are contractual obligations, which are in there and are set.
0:28:25
The variable cost per ton, which is, you know, what you had mentioned.
0:28:29
And then the third variable would be how much tonnage we do bring.
Joshua Goodman
0:29:23
So Mr.
0:29:24
Chair, this has been the case since we closed the last local landfill in 02/2001 at Freshkills.
0:29:30
This system of waste export has fixed costs, as Deputy Commissioner Antonelli mentioned, but the alternative cost is to operate landfills within the city.
0:29:40
You know, long term plan for bringing these costs down is to increase diversion.
0:29:44
And we're seeing really promising results out one month out from the full rollout of the citywide curbside composting program.