Goal: Divert 75% of our solid waste from landfills 

Every year, New York City creates more than 14 million tons of waste. Roughly half is recycled. A quarter is collected from our homes, streets and public institutions.  Another quarter is collected from businesses, including offices, restaurants and manufacturing.  The rest comes from the construction and demolition industry, including fill or dirt from excavation.  Managing this vast amount of solid waste has an enormous impact on our environment, communities and economy. Currently, solid waste represents 3% of the City's GHG emissions.

As our city grows, and we meet the challenges posed by climate change, we must reduce the amount of waste we create.  

In order to meet our goal of diverting 75% of waste from landfills, we first need to reduce the amount of waste we produce overall.  We must continue to improve our solid waste management infrastructure and invest in new technologies to recover resources from our waste. We must aggressively increase recycling at home and in our businesses. If we do all of the above, we will drastically reduce the impact of our city’s waste.