Seek recycling in public schools

Too many recyclables are being sent to our landfills and garbage dumps from our city schools despite a mandated policy to do otherwise.
City Councilmember Peter Vallone issued a statement deriding the lackluster efforts and results in school recycling and announcing his sponsorship of legislation that would require the city to provide the funding and resources to implement stronger recycling in every school.
“Every day, thousands of cartons, cans and bags pass through our schools, and we need to make sure they end up in a recycling center, not a land fill,” Vallone said.
“I was amazed to find out how disregarded this issue is,” said Vallone. “Our children are the ones who we must teach to recycle, not to mention the ones who must bear the burden if we do not.”
Vallone, who sits on both the Education and Environmental Protection committees of the City Council, recalled one of the city’s first recycling laws, passed by his father, Peter Vallone Sr., during his time as Council Speaker.
“You would assume schools are leading they way in this effort,” he said. “Instead, we have to teach our schools.”
According to Jeffrey Shear, chief of staff for the Finance and Administration Division of the DOE, there are currently 372 recycling coordinators for all of the city’s more than 1,400 schools. He cited the inefficiency of the DOE’s current recycling regulations and procedures last updated in September of 2000.
“The Chancellor’s regulation has not kept pace with our changing organization,” he said. “We recognize the need to update it and will be doing so this summer.”
The statement cited janitorial staffing and other budget cutting after 9/11 as a source of inefficient recycling programs.
Recent budget cuts, including the most recent of $11 million in 2006, have reduced available man-hours by 1.6 million per year, the equivalent of 800 full-time custodial positions, said Robert Troeller, president of Local 891, the union representing the school system’s custodians.
A representative for councilmember Robert Jackson said that the issue seems to lie with the fact that the implementation of recycling in schools has usually been left at the discretion of the principal. Jackson, who chairs the Education Committee, wants to change that.
According to Andrew Moesel, Director of Communications for Vallone, only a quarter of all city schools currently have proper implementation for recycling.
Vallone, who has been a proponent of previous recycling efforts in the city, including a bill that would allow plastic shopping bags to be recycled in-store, said the idea of ecological responsibility starting in the classroom seems like common sense.
We’re interested in education, as well as environmental issues,” said Moesel. “This is where those things meet.”
“We would like to move as soon as possible,” said Vallone. “But as always, we want to give people the chance to act on their own before we force anything.”