Saturday, June 14, 2025
An empty milk carton and an empty cereal box have something in common: They aren’t recyclable.
Manufactures create these products, like many others, with a concoction of materials, such as plastics and paper. When companies combine different materials to create a single product, they create a non-recyclable, Frankensteinian product.
According to the villages of Lynbrook and East Rockaway, recyclable materials include plastics No. 1 and 2, corrugated boxes, cardboard, newspapers, paper, cleaned cans and glass bottles, magazines and junk mail.
Phil Healy, Lynbrook’s superintendent of public works, said that the growing problem of waste management is attributable to misconceptions about recycling — and who is responsible for properly disposing of waste.
“The consumer gets blamed for recycling, yet the industry has no real stewardship programs,” Healy said.
Healy refers to so-called product-stewardship and extended-producer-responsibility policies, aimed at reducing the environmental impact of products throughout their lifecycle, from production to disposal.
In practice, these policies work on something of a hybrid model, assigning responsibility to manufacturers that create products, individuals who consume them and municipalities that handle the waste.
New York state enacted the Returnable Container Act in 1983, also known as the Bottle Bill, with its 5-cent returnable deposit on recyclable drink containers. Other policies focus on other products, such as electronics, which have a larger impact on the environment. But those policies do not regulate how low-impact items, such as cereal boxes and plastic bags, are manufactured — which has led to a high volume of products that are difficult to recycle, Healy said.
Some cardboard, like that used in thin cereal boxes, has no value, while corrugated cardboard, used in shipping containers, is in high demand. And the challenge of recycling is complicated by manufacturers’ use of ingrained labels and dyes on products, which disqualifies them from being recycled, regardless of the materials used.
While there is a market for some materials like cardboard and certain plastics, their value has decreased as countries like China and Southeast Asian nations have tightened their import restrictions on foreign waste, Healy said. The industry, he explained, has little incentive to recycle products that can’t be reused, which drives up municipalities’ costs of properly disposing waste.
These exceptions lead to confusion for residents on what to recycle because, as Healy noted, if a resident sees plastic or cardboard, they think: recyclable.
But what if companies utilized removable stickers, instead of permanent dyes on products? Or what if manufactures only used No. 1 and 2 plastics?
Healy said he believes the concept of recycling would be easier and more efficient if manufacturers created products with recycling in mind, instead of placing the burden on the consumer and municipality.
Conflicting research studies and local regulations can also lead to confusion, and sometimes cynicism on whether to recycle.
“Don’t waste your time,” Frank Boni of Lynbrook said. “Less than 4 percent gets recycled, if that much. It all goes to the dump, and nothing is separated.”
Others recycle as much as possible, but feel uncertain with inconsistencies in labelling and regulations.
“It’s difficult because each town has different rules,” Christina Guilino of Lynbrook said. “I check what’s recyclable where I am.”
It's estimated that at least 80 percent of the materials sent to landfills or combustion facilities in the state has some monetary value, and could potentially be recycled or reused— but could be lower due to contamination and inefficiencies in the process, according to New York State Department of Environmental Conservation data.
In the Town of Hempstead, residents currently recycle roughly 25 percent to 30 percent of their total waste, below the national average of 32 percent, according to Yiyi Wang, a researcher at Stony Brook University.
Some city and state officials argue residents should recycle any items, regardless of initial hesitation on if an item is recyclable.
Joshua Goodman, with the Department of Sanitation in NYC, told a reporter from the City:
“If you’re not sure, let us take care of it. We are the experts. If you put it in the trash, it definitely doesn’t get recycled.”
However, Healy said putting everything in recycling creates inefficiencies and added expenses.
When trash ends up in recycling, transporting that waste to the correct facility can add to the overall cost.
“The recycling company is forced to treat them as trash, and that’s a cost burden for municipalities,” he said.
Much of the Village’s trash is sent to a waste-to-energy incineration plant in Hempstead, which generates electricity from burning trash.
This process helps offset some of the costs associated with waste management, Healy said.
The facility processes thousands of tons of waste annually, converting it into steam that powers turbines for electricity generation.
It costs $85 per ton for waste incineration, compared to $110 per ton for recycling because of the labor involved in hand-processing the materials.
This adds up when considering Lynbrook residents generate about 11,000 tons of waste a year, Mayor Alan Beach noted.
Energy recovery with environmental safeguards is included in state solid waste management legislative policy as an acceptable method of solid waste management, said John J. Salka, public information officer for New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation.
He said New York State is developing an updated State Solid Waste Management Plan, working directly with municipalities and all New Yorkers to employ a circular economy, which focuses on reusing, recycling and reducing environmental harm.
According to the budget, the Village spends about $1.2 million on contracted services for waste disposal a year.
The village has explored alternative waste management technologies, such as more efficient methods for collecting and disposing of trash, but these options have proven to be cost-prohibitive, Beach said.
“But maybe in the future the industry will develop cost effective methods of developing environmentally friendly and cost effective ways of picking up and disposing of trash,” he said.
The public works budget for 2025-2026 is pending, but Beach said he feels confident Healy will keep it as efficient as possible.
