_ Your Trash Ain’t Nothing But Cash
The Question Is: Who is Collecting It? 11.15.11

_Once again NBN is indebted to the New York Times for reporting on a vital issue in a thorough manner only its resources and expertise allows. With that genuflection out of the way we will now tell you what the Gray Lady left out its 1,600-word article on NYCity recycling two weeks back: the prospect of lingering corruption in the city’s garbage hauling industry. Up until roughly 1995, the Mafia’s control of NYC garbage hauling was as blatant as the oil industry’s present-day control of the Tea Party. It was in 1995 that then Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau blew the lid off the Mafia’s monopoly over the city’s carting cartels and turned the industry over to outside interests like Browning Ferris Industries and Waste Management Industries. But these two mega-corporations have their own checkered pasts and clearly are not playing by the rules in some instances either.

_Years back NBN acquired original copies of the mob informant testimony in Morgenthau’s prosecution of the trash carting cartels. The testimony made clear to us that ridding the city’s garbage hauling industry of mob influence would be harder than clearing the subways of rats. Like the rats, the mob garbagemen were everywhere and entrenched. Dollars to donuts they still are, they just painted their trucks. A finsky gets you frosting they are the primary reason New York City’s recycling sucks today. The testimony showed the mob had extorted $250 million in 1995 dollars from Manhattan businesses through a monopoly on the market. That’s too much money to see disappear entirely just because two new companies have reportedly taken over operations from the mob. No doubt there was substantial savings from Morgenthau’s prosecutions, but not nearly as much as can still be realized if recycling ever really takes a foothold in New York and other cities across the country.

_This brings us to another element missing in the NYTimes piece and more generally in New York City law: residents’ recycling responsibilities. In a city clogged with garbage, wouldn’t it be logical to ask residents to take greater responsibility for what they throw out? Why aren’t residents compelled to sort cardboard, from newsprint from white paper? Why not tear the cellophane windows from your bill envelopes? Why not clean and separate every plastic item coming into your house according to the tiny numbers stamped on the underside of each? Because it’s a huge nuisance and there’s nothing compelling people to do so. Why is that? NBN suspects that powerful, possibly still criminal, interests are making huge profits by just hauling the stuff away to who-knows-where.