Recycling and ADNY

It’s our 30th anniversary, and we’re self-celebrating. Over the next few months, we’ll be rolling out 30 stories about 30 of our biggest accomplishments, including everything from our daily public safety and sanitation work, to our small business outreach, to how we helped the neighborhood navigate challenges and even tragedies. You’ll be able to find these stories on our website, as well as in our weekly newsletter, which you can subscribe to here. 

At the Downtown Alliance, we work hard to keep Lower Manhattan sparkling while also doing our part to promote forward-thinking waste policy and practice. After deploying dozens of Bigbelly solar-powered trash compactor units across the district in 2012 and 2013, in 2014, the Alliance launched a recycling initiative pairing all of those units with accompanying recycling receptacles. Now, we operate and maintain 178 of these paired units, which allows us to divert one-third of the neighborhood’s public space waste into recycling. This is a heavily trafficked district that produces a lot of commercial waste, so those numbers can be significant. In 2024, for instance, we collected over 1000 tons of trash and over 324 tons of recyclables — that’s more than 60 elephants worth of recycling.

Our ongoing efforts to reduce waste and promote recycling and reuse go even further. Downtown Alliance hosts a number of community recycling events a year, typically electronic waste in the spring and clothing/textiles in the fall, paired with a mobile shredding truck. These events are always well-attended and provide an excellent opportunity for residents and others to sustainably reduce their own clutter. Plus, they’re another great way for our team members to connect with our neighbors — come say hi to us at the next one!