The unmarked trucks had out-of-state license plates. They came through the city at night on regular intervals and left with thousands of tonnes of rubbish -- all of it recyclable.
Department of Sanitation officials say these thefts, which they began investigating earlier this year, were costing the city perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
The City Council unanimously passed a bill on Tuesday that would sharply increase fines for people who steal recyclable material from curbsides -- to US$2,000 from US$100 for a first offense, and US$5,000 for each subsequent offense within a year.
Officials say the bill is aimed at organized enterprises that use vehicles, which would be impounded under the new law, adding that the US$100 fine had not been large enough to prevent these thefts. Mayor Michael Bloomberg is expected to sign the bill, an administration spokesman said.
Sanitation officials estimated the city might be losing as much as 14,000 tonnes of paper a year from Manhattan alone. Based on the city's current recycling contract, which pays US$10 to US$30 a tonne, that means an annual loss of between US$140,000 and US$420,000.
That an underground market has developed for the city's recycled material is a big reversal for a program that took years to find a steady footing after a series of court battles and budget cuts in the 1990s. Even the Bloomberg administration, now known for its environmental policies, considered sharply scaling back recycling in its early years, calling it too costly.
"Our recyclable waste that used to be thought of as worthless is getting so valuable that people now see an economic advantage to stealing it," said Eric Goldstein, a senior lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that helped prepare the city's original recycling law in 1989. "What this sensible legislation does is create a mechanism that would get at the problem of rustlers of recyclables."
"It's a little ironic that five years ago the administration was saying we should end recycling because there was no market for it," said City Councilman Michael McMahon, a Staten Island Democrat and chairman of the Council's Sanitation Committee.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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