Monday, October 25, 2010

Mayor Breaks Ground on Recycling Facility in Sunset Park

Mayor Bloomberg today broke ground on a new Sims Municipal Recycling Facility that will serve as the principal processing facility for all of the City’s metal, glass, and plastic recyclables.

The new, state-of-the-art facility is located at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park and will create 100 new jobs when opened, which is expected in December 2011. 

“This recycling facility will reduce the distance that our collection trucks currently travel by more than 260,000 road miles each year by allowing recyclables to be delivered by barge,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “This will help advance two of the biggest goals of PlaNYC: cleaning the air we breathe and shrinking our city’s carbon footprint. The Sims recycling facility will also help us revive Brooklyn’s working waterfront.”

Sims Metal Management is investing $44 million to create the new 100,000-square-foot facility, which will include processing and storage buildings, and a Visitor Education Center where school groups and visitors can learn about recycling. The facility will receive collections from Brooklyn by no more than 100 trucks per day, while the remainder of the City’s metal, glass, and plastic recyclables will be delivered to the facility via barge from two existing Sims facilities in the Bronx and Queens.

The facility, designed by Selldorf Architects, will incorporate sustainable elements including green roofs and renewable energy production, on-site stormwater treatment, and landscaping that serves to offset heat and provide a pleasing visual aesthetic for the surrounding community. It will operate 24 hours a day, six days a week.

Currently, New York City spends more than $90 million each year to deliver recyclables collected by the Department of Sanitation to three different facilities in the Bronx, Queens, and Jersey City. The City is investing over $80 million on infrastructure upgrades to support the development of the Sims facility and an adjacent auto processing and cargo handling facility for the Axis Group, currently under construction.