Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso on Monday blasted the sanitation department’s delayed rollout of its commercial waste zone program, which was intended to weed out private garbage haulers with troubled safety records.
The program establishes 20 zones where no more than three companies are allowed to pick up garbage from stores, restaurants and other businesses. The idea was to prevent trash haulers from sending trucks on long routes spanning several boroughs — a practice that wasted fuel and led to driver exhaustion that correlated with a string of fatal crashes.
But Reynoso, during a City Council sanitation committee meeting, criticized the sanitation department’s decision to give licenses to several companies with a history of reckless driving. His remarks came after Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch reported the department appointed a monitor to oversee two of the companies due to safety concerns: Cogent Waste Solutions and New York Recycling Solutions.
Reynoso said the monitorship, which was first reported by Streetsblog, doesn’t go far enough, and argued the companies shouldn’t have been granted licenses through the commercial waste zone program. He said the decision to issue them licenses undermines the spirit of the program.
“I want to be very clear that Cogent was the poster boy as to why this legislation even needed to happen in the first place,” Reynoso said. “For DSNY to allow for a contract to go forward to them just speaks to how little they care about what the core of the legislation was.“
U.S. Department of Transportation data shows Cogent’s drivers have killed one person and injured another four in crashes over the last two years. The fatality came in January, when one of the company’s drivers crashed with a man in a Mercedes-Benz in Gerritsen Beach.
In a statement, Cogent spokesperson David Vermillion said the company disagreed with Reynoso's comments, "which illustrate a lack of familiarity with our employees and our operations," and Cogent maintains "the most rigorous safety standards in the industry."
"Cogent was awarded this contract through a thoughtful, competitive review process and we are dedicated to providing safe and reliable service with integrity," he said. "As partners in the Commercial Waste Zones program with the City of New York and DSNY, we will work productively with the City-appointed monitor to meet our collective goals: keeping the City's streets clean and safe."
Vermillion added, "We invite [Reynoso] to meet with us and the hundreds of Brooklyn residents whom we are proud to count among our employees so that he can learn more about our commitment to Brooklyn and the City of New York."
Representatives from New York Recycling Solutions did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reynoso, who as a Council member in 2019 pushed legislation that established commercial waste zones, has over the last two years become a vocal critic of the city’s rollout of the program. In March, he criticized DSNY’s decision to launch a single pilot commercial waste zone in Queens next fall instead of quickly rolling out the whole initiative citywide.
In her testimony Monday, Tisch said the department plans to keep a close eye on the trash haulers, and would revoke their licenses if they violate their contracts.
She said companies were chosen for the commercial waste zones based on 14 different criteria, including a company’s pricing, which was given 40% of the weight in DSNY’s calculations when considering applications. The priority on pricing aimed to prevent small businesses from seeing steep hikes in their trash collection bills, Tisch said.
“Every single factor that was included in that legislation, sustainability, health and safety plans, all of it was considered quite thoughtfully and meaningfully, and we can talk more offline about specifics,” said Tisch. She added that her team has done “an extraordinary job trying to implement in the real world what was quite theoretical when it was when it was introduced and when this legislation was passed.”
