July
31
/ 2025
New York City knows it has a waste management problem. The average city household generated 1,899 pounds of trash in 2023. Only around 17 percent of the city’s curbside waste is recycled, despite efforts to change, such as the city’s 2020 plastic bag ban.
Much of the city’s solid garbage and waste, if it is not incinerated, ends up in large landfills upstate, in neighboring states including Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and further south in Virginia.
