The prominent issue I see at the New School when it comes to sustainability is the systems in place work, however the students that occupy the system aren’t educated enough to know how to properly use them.

My research was integrated into the project to obtain statistics about the New York City trash systems currently in place and the issues within them.

• Times, The New York. Where Does New York City’s Trash Go? | Living City | The New York Times. September 25, 2014. Accessed March 08, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6LzB6rMDtA.
• A sustainability tour of the New School University by Erik Eibert.

In 1934, the Supreme Court finally passed a law in which NYC was not allowed to dump their waste in the ocean anymore. Unless one works for a landfill or is a garbage collector, the average person never sees their trash after put out to the concrete in New York City. The main landfills that occupy the immense amount of tons of trash from the boroughs are located in upstate New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia. 85% of the trash from NYC boroughs is exported to other areas, this costs about $300,000,000 dollars a year to do so. There is an enormous amount of food waste in NYC, let alone in the United States. This organic material could be turned into compost, it is the most natural form of recycling- however sorting is not always accurate due to the responsibility of the population. With regulation, comes high standards. For example, it’s a matter of truly caring because there are no immediate and monetary consequences for inaccuracy when sorting.