The Staggering Cost of Garbage!

Amazing!

MassRecycle: The Massachusetts Recycling Coalition

NYC's Independent Budget Office has recently published statistics about waste generation and per-capita disposal/recycling costs for the city. It is surprising that the city could not negotiate a better contract for their recycling service (it costs more for New Yorkers to recycle), but here in MA recycling saves money for most communities.

December 13, 2012

Average New Yorker Produces Over 2 Pounds of Garbage Per Day

By SAM ROBERTS

Richard Perry/The New York Times Trash remains one of the city’s leading exports.

Garbage in, garbage out, the saying goes. But how much, and at what cost?

The average New Yorker produced nearly three pounds of residential refuse or recyclables daily in 2012, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office (see chart below).

While that’s the lowest amount since at least 2000, the cost of collecting and disposing of the garbage has remained relatively constant, ranging from a low of about 70 cents in 2002 to a high of more than 80 cents in 2008. In 2012, the average cost per person daily was about 75 cents. The cost figures are all in 2012 dollars.

Refuse accounts for most of the garbage (more than two pounds), but recycling, which is more expensive per pound, makes up nearly half the daily expenditure.

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