Dive Brief:
- NYC Major Bill de Blasio's office announced Monday that Whole Foods Market Inc., Walt Disney Co's ABC, Anheuser Busch, and nearly 30 other big name companies have pledged to cut their landfilled waste in half by June through the "Zero Waste Challenge." This effort, which is part of de Blasio's 90% diversion goal by 2030, has already led participants to divert 13,000 tons of trash since February (when the challenge began).
- Food waste-generating businesses and organizations like the New York Mets baseball team, luxury hotels, and restaurants are also called on to make a regular practice of donating edible leftover food to collection organizations.
- New York is the largest city in the Western Hemisphere to set this ambitious goal.
Dive Insight:
New York City has not slowed down on its a path to zero waste. By 2015 there were 225 composting sites and 64 food drop-off sites citywide, and the city has since stepped up its program, requiring many businesses to compost—with talk of requiring more of them to do so soon.
NYC has also pushed forward on the recycling front through initiatives like an e-cycling program that's providing collections to one million city dwellers.
Many are realizing the power in partnerships, which is what New York City’s "Zero Waste Challenge" is about: bringing in big businesses who typically generate a lot of the waste, and in many cases can benefit from bringing what’s salvageable back into the loop.
"We're doing what we can to make recycling and composting as accessible as possible to New Yorkers, but everyone will need to do their part to make a more sustainable New York City a reality," de Blasio said in a statement. "These businesses are leading the way."
