42 Materials Flow <strong>Greening</strong> procurement, minimizing waste, and maximizing savings Given the scale and diversity of its operations, the <strong>MTA</strong> must procure and dispose of thousands of tons of material goods each year. Collectively, the <strong>MTA</strong> agencies purchase some $2 billion worth of products and services annually in an operating budget of about $11 billion. In addition, the <strong>MTA</strong> must manage its customer-generated waste, process-generated waste, office waste, and construction and demolition debris. To improve its materials flow oversight, the <strong>MTA</strong> should link the procurement and disposal ends of its operations into a unified tracking process. It must then reduce both its intake of raw materials and its waste, reuse materials wherever possible, and recycle increasing percentages of the total flow. On the procurement end, the Commission sees new opportunities to integrate and expand the <strong>MTA</strong>’s existing green programs into a more unified system. <strong>The</strong> <strong>MTA</strong> is in the process of developing an All-Agencies Green Procurement Action Plan for precisely such purposes. In addition to reducing waste at the front end, green procurements can achieve multiple aims. <strong>The</strong>se include screening toxins, reducing carbons in manufacturing and delivery, minimizing packaging, supporting green industries, services, and regional suppliers, and much more. In the bigger picture, green procurement also extends to the innovative materials used to lighten the <strong>MTA</strong> rolling stock or enhance green building designs and energy-efficient equipment, fixtures, and vehicles. To unify these multiple aims, the <strong>MTA</strong> should adopt a lifecycle analysis (LCA) process to help staff identify, price, and track sustainability value in agency purchasing decisions. Once implemented, these steps should ultimately produce sizeable savings. From a sustainability perspective, all procurements are future disposals. On the waste management and disposal end, the <strong>MTA</strong> already runs a variety of reclamation and recycling programs. <strong>The</strong>se range from green office policies and site-separation of station waste to <strong>MTA</strong> Capital Construction’s reuse of worksite construction materials and excavated soil. <strong>The</strong> Commission believes that the <strong>MTA</strong> can capture more value at the disposal end, both through material reuse within the <strong>MTA</strong> and from salvage revenues. In a good economy, salvaged scrap at NYCT can generate some $3.7 million annually and the <strong>MTA</strong> should be able to tap emerging markets in scrap, oils, and organic waste energy for additional revenues. To manage its large volume of station waste, the <strong>MTA</strong> now uses both post-collection and sourceseparation recycling. <strong>The</strong> Commission recommends that wherever possible the <strong>MTA</strong> transition to source-separation bins, which have the added benefit of encouraging New Yorkers to recycle. Likewise, the <strong>MTA</strong> should take advantage of its wide public reach to promote recycling and other green habits among its customers and employees. Measuring, tracking, and greening a materials flow on the scale of the <strong>MTA</strong>’s is inevitably an ongoing task. To provide perspective, the Commission surveyed other transit agencies and extracted best practices for green procurements and disposals from two major agencies, London and Toronto, both comparable in function to the <strong>MTA</strong> and known for high environmental standards. <strong>The</strong> survey confirmed that the <strong>MTA</strong> currently equals the London and Toronto systems on many green practices and it identified some key areas for improvement. In transit agencies, as in all large organizations, what gets measured, gets managed. By better quantifying its materials flow, the <strong>MTA</strong> will have a powerful tool for reducing waste, adding revenues, and managing one of the 21st century’s most important sustainability issues. Scrap Commodity Management and Recycling New York City <strong>Transit</strong>’s Asset Recovery Unit manages a program that provides for the environmentally responsible recycling of all NYCT’s retired or obsolete buses. When buses are ready for retirement, they are sent to the Gershow Recycling Center in Medford, New York. At this center, <strong>MTA</strong> buses are first cut into pieces by giant industrial shears, and then placed on a conveyor belt leading up to a recycling machine. This recycling machine consists of 16 1,100 pound hammers which rotate on a drum and render the bus into silver-dollar size pieces of metal. As the crushed material travels on the conveyor belts, a series of magnets and vacuum lines separate the ferrous metal, which is later sold on the scrap market, from the non-ferrous metal, plastic, wood, and fiberglass materials. Reduce…Reuse…Recycle New York City <strong>Transit</strong> recycles tons of scrap each year, including heavy steel, copper, brass, scrap rail, subway car wheels, motors, generators, lead acid batteries, even whole subway cars and buses. In 2007 alone, NYCT recycled 396,248 gallons of waste oil and sold 17,735 tons of scrap material for over $3.7 million.
"Procurement and waste disposal are not discrete and independent activities but rather parts of an integrated whole. Adopting this perspective at the <strong>MTA</strong> will result not only in a range of environmental benefits, but also create opportunities for significant cost savings." – Marcia Bystryn, president, New York League of Conservation Voters Chair, Materials Flow Group 43
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