State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer came to Russ & Daughters, the legendary Lower East Side appetizing store, today to announce a program to make it easier for restaurants to recycle their used cooking oil. The Doe Fund will pick up the cooking oil for free and sell it to producers who will convert it to biodiesel fuel.
When first approached about the program, Silver said he immediately wanted to get Russ & Daughters involved. He said it made a strong statement to other restaurants and food stores that an “institution” in the neighborhood was getting behind the recycling initiative.
Tara DePorte of the Lower East Side Ecology Center said her organization has been training students and quite a few New Yorkers who have lost their jobs to help restaurants reduce their impact on the environment. The program will soon expand to East Harlem and Washington Heights. Restaurants who take part in the program are eligible for special tax credits from the state.
Sounds just great, but the only problem is that the service of recycling cooking oil for biodiesel is already in effect city wide.
This program is actually taking non-profit money that should be going to non-profitable causes and using it to take away business and good-paying green-collar jobs from New Yorkers. Using a government sponsored non-profit to compete with local small businesses drives wages down for everybody. If RWA and Stringer keep this up, the hard working drivers for the other companies will be replaced by homeless people working for room and board, and my be homeless themselves. Lets government and non-profits in a smart way that helps instead of hurts our economy.