Recycling in New York, a low-paid job for undocumented immigrants, just got more precarious

Every day at 7 a.m., Graciela Cieza and Robert Romero, a Peruvian immigrant couple, open the doors of the warehouse where they have their recycling center in Queens, New York. It is a small business where they collect cans and bottles to exchange them for money. There they keep hundreds of bags with thousands of bottles and cans of water, soda and beer classified by brand, product and size. They have been working in this redemption center for eight years, and five months ago they became owners of the business. “The man who owned it before us closed because he declared bankruptcy,” says Cieza, 65, who came to the United States 12 years ago with her two children and her husband.

New York State’s fragile recycling ecosystem for bottles and other materials is run largely by immigrant workers and seniors who earn roughly $30 a day as independent recyclers and $40 a day if they run redemption centers, and who have not seen an increase in the value of the items they collect in the last 15 years.

Recycling in New York State is a chain process. First, consumers drop off their bottle or can in the blue recycling bin. Then, independent recyclers collect the material and take it to a redemption center, such as the one run by Cieza and Romero, where they are paid 5 cents per unit. There, the center workers categorize the received materials by brand, type of container and size to sell them to distributors, which can be the companies that manufacture the beverage container, those that sell them, or the bottlers, who pay them 8.5 cents per container and send them to factories that transform them.

In the past two years, 150 of the state’s roughly 700 redemption centers have closed because they are no longer profitable, according to the New York Public Interest Research Group. And their managers have warned that without a statutory increase in the value of cans and plastics, more closures will follow. Meanwhile, some efforts by state lawmakers to rescue the industry are running into campaigns by political opponents and major bottlers who argue that raising recycling fees would hurt consumers.

Debate on the Bigger Better Bottle Bill, which was proposed last year by Democratic state Senator Rachel May, has been postponed until January 28. As they await what they consider a fairer payment, redemption centers are going bankrupt, say organizations that signed the petition to Governor Kathy Hochul for immediate relief.

Redemption centers forced to close

The new Bigger Better Bottle Bill proposes raising the deposit fee from 5 to 10 cents per unit collected and from 3.5 to 6 cents per unit for handling, which Graciela Cieza and Robert Romero do. This would double the current revenues of redemption centers and independent recyclers. Additionally, recycling rates are expected to increase in a state that currently recycles only 17.2% of its waste, according to figures from the Department of Sanitation. This is below the national average, which is 35%, and states like Oregon, which has implemented a law similar to the one being debated in New York and where the recycling rate is 85.5%.

Jade Eddy, owner of MT Retornables in Queensbury and a member of the Empire State Redemption Association, is thinking about closing her store because she doesn’t have the money to stay afloat. Eddy has given up hope that the law will pass before she loses the business that has fed her family for 20 years. “I’m currently on poverty assistance, I spent all my retirement savings and lost my home trying to keep my business going,” the 40-year-old says in a video call. “The position they’ve put us in is criminal because I see Albany lawmakers more concerned about big companies like Pepsi, who oppose the bill, than the small businesses that serve their communities.”

If the new law is approved, bottlers will have to invest more in recycling the containers of the products they sell, as they would go from paying 8.5 cents to 16 cents to redemption centers. According to the Container Recycling Institute, a non-governmental organization dedicated to researching recycling and collection in the United States, the main opponents of the legislation are bottlers such as PepsiCo, Coca Cola and Anheuser Busch. However, PepsiCo spokesperson Andrea Foote told Politico that “PepsiCo has been working in New York to address the needs of communities, including advocating for New York bottle bill improvements.”

“If they close, we will be left with nothing”

The threat to redemption centers impacts independent recyclers, who are mostly immigrants, almost half of them Latino, with an income level of less than $400 per month, according to a report by Sure We Can, a redemption center and community space for independent recyclers in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

“We used to go to a center that was closer to our house, but it was closed due to economic problems. So now we come here, but we have to walk a long way and we are tired,” say Pedro Romero and Josefa Marín, a 68-year-old couple of undocumented Mexican immigrants who take the recyclable material they collect to the Sure We Can center. They both started working as independent recyclers because they do not have a pension that covers all their expenses. “It would affect us a lot if this center closed. If they close, I think it would be better to return to Mexico right away,” says Marín.

Angela, a 50-year-old independent recycler originally from the Dominican Republic, has been collecting recyclable materials for two years, after she lost her job as a cook in a restaurant in Manhattan. She works every day and takes the material to the Graciela Cieza and Robert Romero redemption center in Queens. “This work is what is giving me money to support my three children and pay the rent. If these centers close, we will be left with nothing,” said the Dominican worker, who preferred not to give her full name due to her irregular immigration status.

The Returnable Container Act (also known as the “Bottle Bill”) has been in effect since 1982. It mandates a 5-cent deposit fee that consumers pay when purchasing bottled or canned beverages, refundable if the consumer returns the container for recycling; and a 1.5-cent handling fee that includes an additional payment that distributors and bottlers must make to redemption centers.

In 2009, the New York Assembly raised the handling fee to 3.5 cents and redistributed unclaimed funds. Before that, the 5-cent deposit fee was held by the bottlers. Since the reform, 80 percent of unclaimed deposits have been allocated to the New York Environmental Protection Fund, with the remainder remaining with the bottlers.

The money raised by the public fund is used to finance environmental programs, education, infrastructure and community services, according to the fund's website. The most recent report on the projects that benefit from the Environmental Protection Fund dates back to 2013.

Sure We Can argues that the fund is not helping with the sector’s defunding crisis. “The grant program has not provided funds to the affected redemption centers. We submitted an application and never received a cent,” says its director, Ryan Castalia.

Over the past 15 years, prices in the United States have increased by 36.4% and people’s purchasing power has steadily decreased. In the same period, the value of the work of redemption centers and recyclers has not received a single increase. “I am hopeful that New York will defend the environment by protecting its workers and developing green infrastructure within the state,” adds Castalia, who is hopeful that the State Assembly will approve the law.

Despite being one of the promoters of the new law, recycler Josefa Marín fears that, if approved, her work will be affected. “Before, we collected many more bottles than now, and they only paid 5 cents per bottle. If the law is approved, beverage consumers will start to take the bottles back themselves because they will realize that they can get a good amount of money by returning them,” she says.

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