New York City-based Recycle Track Systems (RTS) has announced its participation in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Zero Waste Challenge. During the challenge, RTS reported its progress on achieving its challenge requirements, which supported Whole Foods Market grocery stores.
The Zero Waste Challenge is part of de Blasio’s OneNYC commitment to send zero waste to landfill by 2030. This was the inaugural year of the challenge, and 31 businesses across all five boroughs participated to help reduce waste. To successfully complete the challenge, each participant committed to divert at least 50 percent of its waste from landfill and incineration by the end of the challenge, which ran from February 2016 to June 2016.
“In OneNYC, we made a commitment to sending zero waste to landfill by 2030,” says de Blasio. “Our Zero Waste Challenge and the participants have proven that a collected effort helps reduce unnecessary waste. Together, businesses from a variety of sectors diverted 36,910 tons of waste that would have otherwise been sent to a landfill. This challenge proves that our commitment can be achieved so long as every New Yorker does their part to create a more sustainable city. My thanks to the businesses that stepped up to the challenge.”
“Supporting Whole Foods Market in this year’s Zero Waste Challenge was a unique opportunity that we were honored to be a part of,” says RTS CEO and co-founder Greg Lettieri. “At RTS, our on-demand services for waste removal and recycling have been designed to aid a broader initiative of reducing waste around the city and eventually the world. Our proprietary technology is helping our customers and haulers be more efficient. That ultimately reduces waste over the long-term. Having worked very closely with Whole Foods Market on this challenge since February, we are pleased with the progress made to get us all closer to achieving a state of zero waste.”
RTS helped Whole Foods increase its diversion rate by nearly 10 percent through on-site educational programs with departmental teams. By completing the challenge with a greater than 50 percent diversion rate, Whole Foods Market received a milestone award.
“In line with our company’s Green Mission, we were excited to participate in the Zero Waste Challenge and could not have asked for a better partner,” says Kylie Sale, Whole Foods Market’s Northeast region Green Mission specialist. “Working with RTS to incorporate their innovative solutions into our process for organics and waste diversion has helped us achieve new waste removal goals. Even though the challenge has officially ended for this year, together with RTS, we will continue to commit to reducing more waste each day.”