July 6, 2018

The Honorable Bill de Blasio
Mayor, City of New York
City Hall
by email and hand-delivery
The Honorable Kathryn Garcia
Commissioner, Department of Sanitation

Dear Mayor de Blasio and Commissioner Garcia:
This letter is sent on behalf of a majority of people and organizations engaged by the
Department of Sanitation (DSNY) for its Commercial Waste Zones Advisory Board (CWZAB),
following a series of discussions about the purposes and direction of the Administration’s zonefranchising development process. Together, we urge that you withdraw the proposal
immediately and initiate good-faith discussions to maintain and improve the city’s existing
successful open-market system for managing commercial waste, recyclables and organics –
with essential stakeholders, including labor, waste/recycling service companies, businesses, and
environmental advocates re-shaped for that purpose.
A bill – Intro 996 – providing a comprehensive framework for such discussions has been
introduced into the City Council, providing the opportunity to re-think and re-start more
productive discussions to improve the city’s commercial waste management system.
Over the past eighteen months, we have participated as members of DSNY’s Commercial Waste
Zones Advisory Board, and have given fair and reasonable consideration to the city’s intentions
and proposal.
It is clear that the zone-franchise idea is severely flawed, inappropriate for New York, and
cannot be salvaged. The initial overly simplistic idea of “exclusive zones” has been reshaped
into even more complicated variations that raise significant questions about whether it is, in
fact, the best (or only) course of action for achieving the city’s goals.
DSNY’s recent decision to pursue the untested idea of zones with multiple service providers
makes three things clear:
First, the initial rationale – reducing vehicle miles traveled - for a zone-franchise system has
effectively been abandoned; it was based on questionable data with the idea that each zone
would be served by a single, exclusive service provider – which has now been rejected.

 Second, a multi-hauler non-exclusive franchise system based on arbitrary geographic zones
does not exist in any municipality. Basic design and implementation questions about how such
zones would operate – including initial allocation of customers, ongoing competition between
companies in each zone, use of both rate “caps and floors” – are not yet answered. DSNY’s
consultants acknowledge that neither plan would necessarily result in fewer trucks – which is
mostly a function of how much total waste is generated – and that the multi-hauler zone idea
would substantially erode any potential VMT reduction.
Third, a top-down city-controlled zone-franchise system risks converting a successful businessto-business relationship into a bureaucratic business-to-city arrangement, burdening both
customers and waste service providers with substantial new regulations and oversight.
Unfortunately, the rhetoric surrounding this proposal makes unrealistic claims that somehow a
zoned-franchised system would improve safety, increase recycling and organics, and benefit the
city’s overall quality of life. New York City already benefits from a well-regulated collection of
mostly locally-owned companies that bring generations of knowledge, passion and
commitment to their work in keeping the city clean, and environmentally progressive. Many of
the protections for customers promoted by zone-franchising rhetoric in fact already exist in
regulations and practice. The city’s robust recycling and organics diversion system is well
established by existing laws, regulations and best practices.
The extended five-year time-frame to implement a zone-franchise system also argues for
addressing safety-related and other concerns sooner, if not immediately. The proposed
legislation in the City Council would do just that.
Remarkably, the process has not addressed how best to promote innovation and investment,
nor suggested any direct relationship to the city’s zero waste and greenhouse gas emission
reduction goals. In our view, those matters bear no relationship to whether geographic zones
and franchises are implemented, and the city’s goals can be effectively pursued while
maintaining the open-market system.
Finally, Los Angeles offers a timely example of what could happen in NYC: LA recently struggled
to implement a zone-based system. Since its transition began last summer, basic service costs
for customers have doubled, tripled or even quadrupled, initial service complaints numbered in
the tens of thousands, and new special-service surcharges angered customers.
Overall, this debate comes at a critical time for the waste and recycling industry – new
regulatory demands and zero-waste aspirations are running head-long into a near-collapse in
global markets for recyclable commodities, and persistent NIMBY pressures to close essential
facilities. Ordinary industry consolidation has been slowed – even as just twenty companies
now provide more than 80% of the city’s services.

 In conclusion, pursuit and achievement of the city’s new goals are not dependent in any way on
dismantling and replacing the open-market system. The city’s new goals are important and
deserve fair consideration, but alternate means of achieving them should now be identified,
assessed and pursued using the framework of Intro 996.
Now is the time to withdraw the zone-franchise proposal and reshape the advisory board
process.
We look forward to your response.
Respectfully,

Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY)

Laborers Local 108 Recycling and General Industrial Laborers

Building Owners & Managers Association
(BOMA)

Westchester Square Business Improvement District

National Supermarket Association

National Waste & Recycling Association
– New York City Chapter

New York State Restaurant Association

New Yorkers for Responsible Waste Management

Food Industry Alliance of New York

[The above organizations also are representative of companies that are directly engaged in the
commercial waste zones advisory board. In addition, other leading associations of businesses
not directly engaged in the advisory board also support the request in this letter.]