Facing a veto threat from Mayor Bloomberg on an electronic waste recycling bill, the City Council is removing part of the bill that would require manufacturers to collect for recycling a portion of the electronic goods they sell in the city or face fines. While Bloomberg is generally in favor of the recycling bill, he contends the provision places an unfair burden on manufacturers. New Yorkers generate approximately 25,000 tons of discarded electronics every year.......

At this point, it's hard to tell whether Ed Begley, Jr. is more famous for his decades of acting or his decades of environmentalism. Sure, he's logged over 200 appearances on stage, film and television, including his Emmy-winning breakout role on St. Elsewhere and his priceless turn on Arrested Development. But his funniest performance is arguably his self-effacing cameo as a hardcore green activist in the classic 1999 Simpsons episode "Homer to the Max", in......

The City Council may have passed an electronics recycling law recently, but Mayor Bloomberg says it's lame and illegal! The bill requires electronics manufacturers to establish recycling programs for their products and establishes fines of $100 by 2010 for people who throw their computers, printers or other electronics in the trash. Manufacturers will also be penalized $50,000 if they fall behind set recycling requirements. The mayor said he would refuse to enforce such a law......

The plastic bags that New Yorkers walk away with after shopping have many functions in their 2nd lives - picking up dog poop, reuse as garbage bags, or even getting caught in trees - but there's one especially novel usage. In today's entry on the city's new plastic bag recycling bill, which awaits Mayor Bloomberg's signature, we learned that plastic bags can also be used as toys for children: The best way to reuse plastic......

Not everyone got an over-hyped "I'm Not A Plastic Bag" when it hit Whole Foods last year, so the powers that be had to step in and put an end to the bag's nemesis: The Plastic Bag! Yesterday, the City Council passed a bill, 44 to 2, requiring stores over 5,000 square-feet to offer recycling for plastic bags, as well as have bins where bags can be returned. And on the plastic bags stores give......

On the weekend of January 5th and 6th, dozens of spots in all five boroughs will be thick with the powerful aroma of fir tree mulch. Yes, it's time once again for the Parks Department's MulchFest! This year's twelfth annual MulchFest looks to be mulch bigger than last year, with almost a hundred different locations where New Yorkers can bring their discarded Christmas trees to be ground into wood chips. The Parks Department encourages people......

Metro has an interview with NYU professor and Department of Sanitation anthropologist-in-residence, Robin Nagle. The piece comes on the cusp of “Loaded Out: Making a Museum,” an exhibition Nagle helped curate which focuses on the DSNY's history and its vital role in shaping the city. The exhibit opens tomorrow and will run for a full month, but she mentions this is just the first step in creating a Sanitation Museum.Police and firefighters have museums. Why......

The Gotham Gazette has a fairly comprehensive overview of the unpleasant byproducts associated with densely populated living: garbage. The details are illuminating, 64,000 tons of weekly garbage that amounts to 7 billion pounds every year. The feature is an examination of the accumulation of daily decisions that New Yorkers make every day about the things they consume and dispose of. Paper, plastic, food waste, electronics, and other things we throw in the trash add up......

New York City is cracking down on the brazen theft of tons of goods that occurs right out in public, practically on a schedule. The Department of Sanitation noticed that the volume of recyclable paper it was collecting was down 2% from the previous year - and in parts of Manhattan's East Side, the decline in paper pick-ups was 25%. That prompted an investigation that found that out of state unlicensed haulers were sneaking into......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery on 5th Ave. in Brooklyn, an electric shock at 25th Ave. and 49th St. in Queens, and a shooting on 101st St. and Columbus Ave. in Manhattan. Chazz Palminteri's stage and screen bildungsroman A Bronx Tale will appear again onstage this fall. The off-Broadway play was adapted to a 1993 movie featuring Palminteri, Robert De Niro, and screen newcomer Lillo Brancato. The latter is now facing......

The city launched a new Public Space Recycling pilot program yesterday that puts blue and green recycling cans in high traffic areas in hopes that people will dump their newspapers and empty glass bottles in their instead of regular trash bins. The program will start in April and last through June, and Mayor Bloomberg said, "The most important thing is, if this works, it will let us do something much more ambitious citywide and really......

A newborn baby was found in the paper recyclables yesterday morning at a plant in Flushing. An A&R; Lobosco Recycling Center employee was sorting paper on a conveyor belt when he discovered the infant. He then called 911; the female newborn still had its umbilical cord attached, and the ME's office is investigating the cause of death. Owner Mike Lobosco says the employee who found the baby, Louis Shalva, is "really upset. He can't talk......

It's that time of year again, when you trade in your summer clothes for your fall sweaters. And why don't you get rid of the things you never wear while you're at it, as the city is having it's annual Fall Electronics Recycling & Clothing Donation Events in all five boroughs. The first event is this Sunday in Staten Island, and next weekend on September 24, the event will be at Union Square in Manhattan......

Mayor Bloomberg released the 2006 Fiscal Year Mayor's Management Report yesterday. The MMR is the Mayor's way of being accountable for city initiatives and agencies, and during the press conference, the Mayor felt that there was still work to be done, saying, "Two-thirds of the things are going in the right direction. A third aren't going as fast as I'd like, or in the right direction.": Like what? The quality of streets has declined (which......

Treehugger has been doing a series of posts on different cities, and today, the attention is turned on New York City:We want to know what are the good, and what are the bad things going on there. What is the general level of eco-consciousness in population? How is it for cyclists? How's public transportation? Suburban sprawl? Air quality? Recycling/composting? As time passes, are things getting better or worse? How are the policymakersThe comments so far......

The family of Milton Rocano wondered why he hadn't come home after working at City Recycling in Greenpoint on Saturday. When Rocano's sister went to the plant to ask where he was, she found that his wallet and clothes were still there, but a supervisor told her he'd show up in a few days. Unfortunately, Rocano's body was found in a Melville dump - it turns out that another employee had dumped tons of scrap......

Ever since bringing back recycling last year, now the Mayor is all over it! One of the bills Mayor Bloomberg signed yesterday (besides the rowdy fan one) was one to promote cell phone battery recycling. Yes, beware of leaking cadmium, lead and mercury from your old batteries, kids. Of course the bill only applies to certain cell phone batteries, and the offenses range from fines for first offenses to jail time (three strikes, you're in......

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg took time to release his Mayor's Management Report and proclaimed that the city - under his watch, natch - to be awesome. During the press conference, he said, "We have become - envy may be too strong, but maybe not - the envy of the rest of the country and the world." Some highlights:- Crime is down 5%, including murders - Recycling has increased, but summons for not following recycling rules has......

Keep those questions coming! A reminder: if you want to keep your questions anonymous, send us an alias. See also some tips for sending us questions. What you may have missed: -Is it okay to get bootleg DVDs overseas if you don't have access to movies otherwise? -Where a girl can go to get a good haircut. -Necessary limits for open relationships. -Cheater, cheater! Is she cheating with your best friend? Is he cheating on......

Our friendly government helpline, 311, turned one yesterday, and as with any birthday in an office, there was a cake. The introduction of 311 as a resource for New Yorkers to direct their non-emergency questions and complaints has reduced the number of calls to 911 (which is good, because then those operators can focus on the emergencies). To date, 311 has answered 6,542,240 calls, able to offer answers in 170 languages. Department of Information......

It's no April's Fool - on April 1, recycling your glass jars and bottles, metal cans, aluminum foil, and plastic bottles and jugs is BACK, baby. Mixed paper and cardboard is also still recycled. You can see the flyer (PDF) the Departmen of Sanitation is including in newspapers next month. While the DoS foresees some confusion, they are confident New Yorkers will embrace being able to recycle everything. Recycling had been suspended to save money......