FROM: Ostroff Associates

DATE: December 11, 2020

RE: Climate Action Council: Waste Advisory panel

Chair
• Martin Brand, Deputy Commissioner, New York State Department of Environmental
Conservation
Members
• Michael Cahill, Partner, Germano & Cahill, P.C.
• John W. Casella, Chairman, CEO, and Secretary, Casella Waste Systems
• Steve Changaris, Vice President, Northeast Region, National Waste and Recycling Association
• Resa Dimino, Senior Consultant, Resource Recycling Systems
• Dan Egan, Executive Director, Feeding New York State
• Jane Atkinson Gajwani, Director, Energy and Resource Recovery Programs, NYC Department of
Environmental Protection
• Paul Gilman, Senior Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer, Covanta
• Dareth Glance, Executive Director, Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency
• Eric Goldstein, Sr. Attorney and New York City Environment Director, Natural Resources
Defense Council
• Allen Hershkowitz, Founding Director and Chairman of the Board, Sport & Sustainability
International
• Tok Michelle Oyewole, PhD., Policy and Comms Organizer, NYC Environmental Justice Alliance
• Lauren Toretta, President, CH4 Biogas
• Brigitte Vicenty, Founder, Inner City Green Team
Steve Changaris: Regarding the existing organics law - the commercial roll out is continuing. Is it
really reducing disposal at landfills or reducing disposal of methane generating material? Are you
going to have two different systems in New York? I don’t think that’s what you’re envisioning. It’s
really to divert these materials from disposal for higher and better use. Composting is an element of
it.
Resa Dimino: Agree we need to focus on diversion of disposal. I think phased policies makes sense.
Moving towards disposal bans on organics and recycles, clarifying recycling requirements for all
sectors could help move a lot into recycling.
Dereth Glance: Universal or statewide standards for compost are really important.
Dimino: Encourage looking creatively at how markets could be built and developed. For example,
using permitting authorities to require the use of compost in projects that disturb a certain amount
of soil.
Tok Michelle Oyewole: Combustion is not a method of processing waste we should focus on – it still
generates GHG. Being that CLCPA focuses on emissions, I think we can’t look at landfilling and
combustion as an either/or thing. Should look at more local infrastructure, so we’re not trucking to
facilities and polluting.
25:00 (goal 5)
Allen Hershkowitz: Looking at what we measure, how we measure, and what we know and don’t
know. We don’t know what the carbon profile of solid waste management in NYS is right now, and
that will be important. Need a workgroup focused on measurement. Also, regarding siting – there’s
all sorts of incentives and barriers built into laws that can facilitate or stall what we’re looking to
do. Some sort of review of regulatory barriers and incentives would be good.
Oyewole: We recognize that in addition to VMT, processing all types of materials also generates
GHG emissions and in NYC there are clusters where 75% of all waste pollution is generated. Need to
recognize there is capacity to process food scraps locally in an intensive way. If we have an
emphasis on allocating land at the local scale, we can process all organics generated within NYC. It’s
estimated we would need 5% of the land in NYC to process all the waste generated. Community
level job training will be important.
Brigitte Vicenty: Think this should be a stand-alone goal. I would like to work with Tok to create a
comprehensive working draft.
Glance: This gets to the resiliency we need in our system. In upstate when China got out of exports,
we just had to go with the lowest bid. Local processing has huge benefits for a more stable
secondary market process industries can rely on.
Hershkowitz: The transport of waste is happening everywhere, some of it is unjust and ecologically
bad. Some of it can be ecologically valuable and economically developmental. Think this gets back
to the need to measure and understand what we are providing incentives for.
Paul Gilman: Folks don’t fully appreciate the extent to which waste travels in the USA. NYC has been
trying to find lower-impact ways of moving waste, and that should be a goal here as well.
Changaris: Will have to reconcile that with the structure of planning. The Legislature passed the law
that said this would be a regional solution. We want to do the things that are best for everyone.
Small is better, but maybe a larger regional facility solution is a better solution than a lot of small
compost sites. It’s a difficult equation.

Brand: Going to skip to goal six

Jane Gajwani: NYC is in the process of transforming facilities, think this has a been great method.
There is a tremendous amount of resources we can recover from “waste water.” Can also co-digest,
take in waste from other states. There are certain types of waste that is difficult to compost. We are
also collaborating with Amsterdam, and they’re trying to have zero-waste, and recover all the
nutrients from waste water. The goals are not just carbon neutrality but energy neutrality and zero
waste.
Gilman: At EPA we were in a debate about land application for biosolids and sort of had to admit we
didn’t know enough to say whether it was a good thing or bad thing – are we in a different place
today?
Gajwani: Yeah, there can be contaminates in the water for instances PFAS, because it’s ubiquitous to
our environment it ends up in our waste chain. There are certain treatment plants and biosolids
that result from that, and I think it needs to be looked at carefully. It’s difficult because it’s not
inherent to our system. There are benefits to land applications because of the nutrients. If we were
to do a land application, we would be net negative. From a climate standpoint, there are
tremendous benefits.