Recycling in NY

By Kwanwoo Jun

     MANHATTAN, New York - Layman Lee, 26, a local environmentalist, usually arms herself with pamphlets on recycling waste when she meets people on the street. But on Wednesday, she prepared something different: a long fishing wire and hundreds of empty plastic bottles.

Stringing the bottles together, she made an “eye-catching” sculpture for the GrowNYC fair at the Union Square Park plaza on 14^th Street and Seventh Avenue on Sept. 29.

“Every year New Yorkers throw 25,059 tons of recyclable pet plastic bottles in their household garbage,” read a nearby sign, “This sculpture represents the bottles trashed.”

In New York, the biggest municipal garbage producer in the U.S., half of the city’s recyclable waste is thrown in the garbage instead of being recycled. GrowNYC, a non-profit environmental group for whom Lee works, cities a lack of public awareness as the culprit.

Christina Salvi, 34, recycling outreach and education coordinator for GrowNYC, said about 35 percent of the city’s waste is recyclable, but only 15 to 17 percent is recycled in a city of more than 8 million.

The city’s Department of Sanitation handles 11,000 tons of residential garbage daily - about double the amount of Los Angeles and three times that of Chicago -, with another 11,000 tons of commercial waste handled privately every day, CNBC reports.

But New York City itself has no landfills. Instead, it pays other states to haul away its garbage.

“When people throw things away, they don’t think about it,” Lee said.

Lee said she and her colleagues discussed how to raise public awareness more effectively during the nine-hour environmental fair on Wednesday.

“Simple. Eye-catching. That’s all I need to be here,” Lee said, smiling, before climbing onto a chair to work on the top of her six-foot sculpture. “We just sat down for a whole day, drilled the holes through the necks and then strung them with a fishing wire.”

And, as it turns out, it worked well.

Many of passers-by, including tourists, were drawn in by the sculpture, giving Lee and her colleagues an opportunity to educate them.

“Every 50 seconds New Yorkers throw away over 1,000 plastic bottles or jugs. So that’s what … the sculpture represents,” said Michael Rieser, 53, a GrowNYC coordinator from Brooklyn.People not only took a photo of the sculpture but also listened to Rieser.
      Rieser busily handed out pamphlets on the city’s recycling rules to people and explained what items should or should not be recycled. Displayed at hand for education were two transparent recycling bins: a green bin for collecting paper and a blue one for metal, glass and plastic materials.

The sign by the GrowNYC sculpture displayed an array of calculated ascending numbers of the plastic bottles dumped by second in the city. It showed that 22 plastic bottles are being thrown in the garbage in every second, 45 in two seconds, 67 in three seconds, 89 in four seconds … and 1,116 in 50 seconds.

“That’s amazing. That’s crazy,” said Ellen Kuchli, 57, a tourist from Israel, in response to the plastic-bottle sculpture and statistics about New York City waste.

Tibetans' rage

By Kwanwoo Jun

     THE UNITED NATIONS, New York - Ear-ripping “Shame-on-China” chants blared from a loud speaker right outside the United Nations compound in New York Wednesday when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was addressing the annual UN assembly meeting.

About 100 protesters, mostly Tibetans carrying colorful flags and shouting anti-Chinese slogans via the trembling black rectangular speaker, fumed at China’s increasingly coercive rule of their plateau homeland north of the Himalayas.

“Shame on China! China, China out of Tibet! Human rights in Tibet!” they chanted during a rally held at Dag Hammerskjold Plaza on 47^th Street and First Avenue next to the UN compound in New York.

Chinese authorities have recently intensified crackdowns on Tibetan writers, artists and intellectuals critical of Beijing, with those who discuss situations in Tibet by e-mail or phone with the outside world facing arrest or harsh jail terms, they said.

Unrest has never ceased in Tibet since Tibetans staged a failed 1959 uprising, which resulted in a government-in-exile under Tibet’s spiritual leader Dalai Lama in India.

A Chinese crackdown on unrest in Tibet in March this year resulted in about 100 reported deaths, according to Reuters international newswire service, with the fate of 1,000 people still unaccounted for after unrest in 2009.

Tibet declared its independence in 1912, but China has ruled the region since its invasion in 1951 saying Tibet has been part of China since centuries ago.

Wen and other Chinese leaders say that Tibetans do have their human rights and freedom and that their lives improve under Beijing’s rule in Tibet.
      But Tibetan pro-independence activists, including Tenzin Dolkar, 25, say Beijing glosses over its brutality.

“He (Wen), being China’s top spin doctor, is here…trying to spin lies about the reality inside Tibet,” said Dolkar, a Tibetan exile and USA director of the Students for a Free Tibet that was among the groups organizing the protest rally near the United Nations building.

“No amount of spin can hide the true reality of China’s brutal occupation in Tibet,” she said in a high-pitched voice amid roaring chants by her fellow protesters.

Dolkar said tons of human right abuses by the Chinese government exist in Tibet. Stories of torturing a detained Tibetan dissident for 30 consecutive days in the Chinese prison cells or raping Tibetan nuns were just part of it, she said.

Dolkar has her own story too: Her entire family, including grand parents, escaped from the Chinese oppression in Tibet. Stripped of the family-owned land, they fled their homeland across the Himalayas to first India and then the United States.

Born in a refugee camp in India, Dolkar has never traveled to Tibet.

She knows it will not be easy for her, blacklisted and followed by Beijing for her activities, to have any luck to travel around her motherland Tibet freely in the near future.

But she does not just give up her hope: “I’m doing something for my country now in exile. I hope to do something for my country inside Tibet when it’s free.”

The protest drew also non-Tibetan US citizens. Among them was Walker Tovin, 14 of Dobbs Ferry, NY, who was an intern at the Tibetan activist group of a Free Tibet during the summer. He praised President Barack Obama’s meeting with Dalai Lama in February despite Beijing’s protest.

    “It was a step in the right direction for sure,” Tovin said. “But I feel like definitely there could be more pressure put on the Chinese government.”

9 years after 9/11

By Kwanwoo Jun

MANHATTAN, New York - Thomas Glen, a Wall Street consultant, was at home when two hijacked airplanes rammed into the Twin Towers near his office nine years ago. Although he was late to work, he was safe, miles away from the most horrific terrorist attack in the U.S.

But his luck did not stop him from getting involved. Glen, 47, living in Brooklyn, jumped into action, quickly forming a group of volunteers to aid in the relief effort like many other New Yorkers.

“We would talk to each other. Even to strangers, we then said ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ ‘What are you thinking?’“ Glen said, gazing at the tightly fenced-off Ground Zero pit.

"Seeing New York come together -- that's probably the thing that sticks out most in my mind. How everyone in New York was everyone's friend.”

Things have become so different now, as people in New York mark the ninth anniversary of the terrorist attack in a more divided way than before.

Tension has risen in New York amid controversy over the planned construction of a new Islamic mosque and cultural center near where the World Trade Center had stood before a group of Muslim terrorists turned its two looming towers into ashes.

A threat – though suspended – by Florida pastor Terry Jones to burn the Islamic holy books in protest of the proposed Islamic cultural center and mosque just added to the strain.

Protesters and supporters from different groups have taken to the streets to express their views, and NYPD officers have strived to keep them apart to prevent possible violence between them.

Heavy police presence and security checks around Lower Manhattan on Saturday explained the elevated level of tension in this multinational city of nearly 8 million people.

During the three-hour memorial ceremony, 2,752 names of victims of 9/11 were being read out loud one by one.

Bereaved families – some still in the enormous pain of losing their loved ones – clutched each other’s hands or laid bouquets of flowers before Ground Zero. Onlookers – some holding a flag or sticking it in a back pocket – also shared the pain by being there.

But the solemn ceremony was immediately followed by street rallies, with about 1,000 people supporting a new Islamic mosque rallying blocks away from the memorial site and protesters also demonstrating separately nearby.

William Gomes, 63, from the Bangladesh American Christian Alliance, and several of his association members vehemently denounced Muslims and their plan to build a new mosque in New York, which President Barack Obama sympathizes with.

“They want to hoist the Muslim flag on the White House. So, wake up America and wake up America,” Gomes shouted, holding a banner reading “DO NOT BURN QURAN RATHER BAN IT.”

But Matt Sky, 26, an online business consultant of East Village in Manhattan, staged a solo street campaign for Muslim’s rights to build their own mosque wherever they want, with a picket reading “HONOR 9/11. HONOR FREEDOM OF RELIGION.”

“We can’t discriminate against an entire religion because of the actions of a few fanatics,” Sky said.

“The people who want to build a community center are Americans. They live here. They work here. We need to have a public forum. We need to address this issue head-on. We need Muslims and non-Muslims to get into a room and to talk.”

“These are not the people that blew up the towers.”

But Lisa Nancollas, 46, a registered nurse from Pennsylvania, remained firmly against the proposed construction of the mosque which would be like a “slap in the face to the families who lost loved ones” in her friend’s term.

“We came today because we don’t believe in Mosque, and so we want to support other fellow citizens,” Nancollas said. “This is disrespectable.”

A traveling Australian couple -- Joan Bartlett, 61 and Keith Bartlett, 67 -- who dropped by the momentous site in New York, also stepped in the debate.

"It wasn't the religion. It was the people of terrorists,” Mr. Bartlett said, despite the demonized images of Muslims since the terrorist attacks.

"It's so scary how it's divided the world now,” Mrs. Bartlett said.

The Australian couple said that a significant amount of time and education would be needed to address all the painful scar left to the bereaved families as well as the society in general in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks.

Maybe, today’s New York needs the same unity as what Glen had felt after 9/11.

Hundreds of US “Flags of Honors” inscribed with the names of 9/11 victims, fire fighters, relief workers and other volunteers were fluttering in breeze at the Battery Parks, south from Ground Zero, which overlooks the Statue of Liberty.

“It’s only the people that can heal it. Only us and only our heart,” said Curtis Ross, 33, a vendor who was selling the flags as a 9/11 souvenir.