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.
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
RSS