These tours won’t be a waste of time.
The nonprofit Open House New York is launching a series of tours offering an up-close look at how the city is managing its waste.
Details for tours at a variety of recycling and refuse centers across the city beginning this month are available on Open House’s website, as part of the organization’s project “Getting to Zero: New York + Waste.”
“With the April 2015 release of the de Blasio Administration’s OneNYC Plan, the City set an ambitious goal: to reduce to zero the amount of waste that New York sends to landfill by the year 2030,” said Gregory Wessner, Open House New York executive director, in a statement. “Through Getting to Zero, Open House New York hopes to deepen public understanding about our urban sanitation systems, and the possibilities for how these systems might be remade in a zero waste city.”
A dozen events are already listed online, with more to come in the next few weeks, according to Open House. Locations range from Goodwill’s reuse centers in Astoria, to Freshkills Park on Staten Island — the Sanitation Department’s ongoing project to turn what was once the largest landfill in the world into one of the biggest greenspaces in the city.
Generally, standard tours will cost $20, $10 for members. For events where Open House will need to provide transportation, that price scale will rise to $40 and $30.
If you can’t make it to a tour, the nonprofit will also be rolling out content focusing on historical waste management practices in New York and the contemporary journeys of our trash.
“Getting to Zero” is Open House’s third installment of its Urban Systems Series, which “makes visible the critical ways in which large-scale urban systems shape the city,” according to the organization.
