NEW DORP — A recycling education campaign has been launched after Staten Island's Mid Island neighborhoods saw a 200 percent surge in the amount of violations.
Councilman Steven Matteo and Department of Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia announced the campaign to teach the proper ways of disposing of recyclable material after the New York Post reported the rise of tickets issued in the past two years.
"Most of them have been recycling since the '90s and it's second nature," Matteo said. "Some aren't and we want to make sure we're reinforcing recycling rules."
The councilman sent out letters in the past month to residents in his district with a sanitation pamphlet showing what trash the city requires to be recycled.
Matteo said that staff from his office and the Sanitation Department also plan to attend community board and local civic group meetings to talk about the "dos and don'ts of recycling."
Also, Matteo said new recycling bins for paper and plastic will be installed in business districts across the borough. Ten were recently introduced on New Dorp Lane, between Hylan Boulevard and Richmond Avenue.
"These garbage cans are another way of promoting recycling," Matteo said.
According to the Post, recycling violations citywide climbed to nearly 56,000 during Mayor Bill de Blasio's first six months, a 47 percent increase compared to the same period last year.
On Monday, Garcia said one reason for the large spike was inspectors usually assigned to issue fines were on Hurricane Sandy cleanup duty in 2013, but returned to violation writing this year.
"Many of our agents were tasked with other duties related to debris clean up with Sandy and then last year we had a really difficult winter, so we had less people out," she said.
Even with the increase in violations, Garcia said the the borough was improving its recycling. Last year, the rate in Staten Island jumped from 17.9 percent to a little over 19% this year.
