MTA lost track of recycling to tune of over $800,000, inspector general says

Evan Simko-Bednarski, New York Daily News on Jul 21, 2026

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NEW YORK — The MTA failed to keep tabs on a contract for removing recycling from transit facilities — a move that’s cost the agency an estimated $800,000 over five years, according to an investigation by the transit agency’s inspector general.

Investigators at the MTA Office of the Inspector General surveilled 40 MTA facilities, according to a report released Tuesday. At 21 of those facilities, investigators witnessed MTA employees fail to separate out recyclables. At all 40, they saw the contracted waste hauler toss trash and recycling all in the same garbage truck.

“Recycling at New York City Transit facilities is legally required, environmentally responsible and financially beneficial to the MTA,” the agency’s Inspector General, Daniel G. Cort, said in a statement.

While Cort called it “troubling that the agency and its contractor disregarded those obligations for years,” he noted that the MTA was already making changes as it prepared to award a new contract for waste hauling at its facilities.

The hauling company — which is unnamed in the IG report — has been an MTA contractor since 2014. But an MTA contract extension proposal presented before the MTA’s board two years ago identifies the contractor as Action Environmental Services, a New Jersey-based firm.

Representatives of Action did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Under the terms of the contract, the MTA pays the firm to remove waste from NYC Transit properties like maintenance facilities, print shops, depots and yards. Meanwhile, the contractor is supposed to remove recyclable cardboard and paper from those premises at no cost to the MTA and must provide credit to the transit agency on a monthly basis when the value of the recycled materials exceeds the cost to the company for processing and selling it.

But the contractor’s self-reported recycling tonnage has plummeted, investigators found. From 2024 until 2019, the firm reported an average of 677 tons of cardboard and paper recyclables per year. In 2018, nearly 800 tons were recycled. Since 2020, that figure has never climbed above 168 tons, with an average of 162 tons per year — a nearly 80% drop in total recycling.

At nearly every facility observed by OIG investigators, the contractor arrived with a single truck to haul both trash and recycling — co-mingling the two despite a contractual obligation to pick up recycling separately.

According to the report, representatives from the contractor admitted to the MTA in May that it had not been using a separate recycling truck.

“In some cases, the company said their driver would estimate the weight by visually gauging the amount of recycling,” the investigators wrote. “but [the company] also acknowledged that other drivers did not even take that step.”

Meanwhile, at 21 of the 40 facilities watched by the investigators, MTA transit workers at the facilities did not separate out the cardboard and paper. At 23 of the facilities, the containers meant for recyclable waste were not marked as such. At least seven facilities had no recycling bins at all, investigators said.

Between the loss in recycling credits and the likelihood that the MTA was overcharged for waste trucks that were in fact loaded with recyclables, investigators at the Office of the Inspector General estimate that the transit agency lost between $150,000 and $200,000 a year between 2020 and 2024. The report does not contain data from 2025, but the MTA was not briefed on the OIG’s findings until November 2025.

The OIG and the MTA both acknowledged that the MTA has been working to increase oversight of its refuse contractor since then.

In a statement, a spokeswoman for the agency said the MTA was working to improve training for employees at NYC Transit facilities, and requiring more comprehensive information from the contractor.

“The MTA is committed to environmentally conscious policies and practices across the agency,” Laura Cala-Rauch said in a statement. “We have directed the vendor to make changes to trash and recycling collection procedures, including mandating electronic billing with all the information necessary on weight tickets as part of their next contract, and are retraining employees to improve sorting of trash and recyclables at transit facilities.”

Cala-Rauch could not confirm whether an upcoming contract for refuse and recycling removal at NYC Transit properties and other MTA facilities had been awarded to Action, but public records show the firm is among the bidders on the contract, which opened last month.

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