Mayor de Blasio’s Zero Waste Challenge helps businesses reduce

New York, NY Mayor de Blasio recently unveiled the Zero Waste Challenge, through which 31 businesses across all five boroughs are dramatically reducing waste. The Zero Waste Challenge is part of the administration’s comprehensive OneNYC plan to send Zero Waste to landfill by 2030. Participants include some of the city’s most iconic businesses from a variety of sectors, such as ABC/Disney, Barclays Center, Citi Field, Le Bernardin, Whole Foods and many more.

“Our Zero Waste Challenge participants are leaders in their industries–and now they’re also leaders in sustainability,” said mayor de Blasio. “In OneNYC, we made a major commitment to sending Zero Waste to landfill by 2030. We’re doing what we can to make recycling and composting as accessible as possible to New Yorkers, but everyone will need to do their part to make a more sustainable New York City a reality. These businesses are leading the way.”

Since the challenge started earlier this year, participants have already diverted nearly 13,000 tons of waste from landfill and incineration (including composting over 4,000 tons), through tactics such as modifying purchase practices, reducing packaging, and switching to reusable materials or digital storage. For example, some participants have stocked their offices with reusable coffee mugs or glasses in lieu of disposable cups and bottled water; another did away with filing cabinets and moved to a digital storage system.

The challenge also requires any participant that regularly has leftover edible food to donate that food to a food collection organization such as City Harvest or Rock and Wrap it Up!, to ensure the food can be used at shelters or food pantries for hungry New Yorkers.

The average diversion rate of all challenge participants is 60%.

This Zero Waste Challenge comes ahead of the new commercial organics law which will require certain subsets of businesses to source separate food scraps and other organic material for beneficial use in 2017, as well as new commercial recycling rules that simplify the city’s current commercial recycling rules, making them easier for businesses to follow. Under these new Department of Sanitation rules, all businesses must recycle all recyclable materials.

Businesses participating in the Zero Waste Challenge come from a variety of sectors, including sports arenas and stadiums; commercial tenants and building owners; food wholesalers, grocers and caterers; schools; hotels; restaurants; and TV productions.

Participants include ABC/Disney, Anheuser-Busch, AppNexus, Barclays Center, Citi Field, Cleaver Co., COOKFOX Architects with landlord SL Green, D’Arrigo Brothers, Dig Inn Seasonal Market (1 location), The Durst Organization (8 buildings), EPA Region 2 office (GSA Building), Etsy, Great Performances Catering, Hilton Garden Inn Staten Island, Hyatt Place Flushing, Katzman Produce, Le Bernardin Restaurant, Le Pain Quotidien at 10 5th Avenue, Madame Secretary (Eye Productions Inc.), Martha Washington Hotel, Momofuku (Brooklyn location), NRDC, RXR’s Starrett-Lehigh Building, sweetgreen (2937 Broadway), The New School, The Peninsula, The Pierre, The Waldorf, Top Banana, Viacom with landlord SL Green, and Whole Foods (Chelsea and Upper East Side locations.)

To successfully complete the challenge, each participant has committed to divert at least 50% of their waste from landfill and incineration by the end of the challenge. Participants are further challenged to step up their efforts and divert 75% – and ultimately 90% – of waste, if possible; however these higher levels of diversion are not required to complete the challenge. Diversion of waste from landfill and incineration can be achieved in many ways, including by purchasing less and more efficiently, using reusable materials whenever possible, donating all edible food to feed hungry New Yorkers, separating food scraps for composting or other beneficial use and separating recyclables for recycling.

Specific goals include:

Reaching 50 percent of waste diverted from landfill and incineration

Reaching 75 percent of waste diverted from landfill and incineration

Reaching 90 percent of waste diverted from landfill and incineration

Greatest overall waste diversion rate from landfill and incineration

Greatest amount of food donated to local charities and organizations to feed hungry New Yorkers

Greatest overall waste diversion rate from landfill and incineration by category of business

Most successful or innovative source reduction effort

The Challenge kicked off earlier this year and will run through mid-June 2016.