The city is looking at the ‘next frontier’ of trash: your old clothes

Ever since the city started collecting old newspapers  in Greenwich Village in 1985, the city has been working to reduce the amount of actual waste sent to landfills down toward zero. Now the City Council is looking to tackle the latest problem to meet that goal: rampant consumerism. 

On Tuesday the City Council Sanitation Committee held a hearing on the possibility of adding curbside collection of textiles — clothes, shoes, linens and other household fabric-based items — to the ranks of food scraps, recycling and household trash. Part of it, DSNY Commissioner Gregory Anderson said, is a response to the “the insatiable appetite of a growing number of Americans as consumers.” 

“We are asking more of our planet and its people than we can endure.”