East River still unprepared for legal e-waste disposal

East River Coop remains unprepared to comply with a state law passed in 2010 that prohibits curbside disposal of electronic equipment. As of January 1, 2015, electronics such as televisions, computers, keyboards, DVD players, and personal digital music players were no loner permitted to be disposed of with regular curbside trash, yet the coop has no system in place to follow these regulations.

After a 3-month grace period, New York City is set to start imposing fines on April 1.

e-waste 577 Grand

Hillman Coop last year adopted a NYC’s e-cycleNYC program, which is free for residential buildings with 10 or more apartments. Special containers for electronic waste are provided and proper pickup is arranged by the city.

Even though East River and Hillman share management and maintenance, East River is not set up to dispose of electronic waste in a legal manner.

I’ve had some dialogue about this with Assistant General Manager Shulie Wollman. Just after the new year deadline I was told “We are trying to get these containers for East River, as well.”

This week, with April 1 fines looming, Mr. Wollman wrote me, “We received paperwork from the City and will be joining their e-waste program similar to what we are doing at Hillman.”