City Expands Recycling Program to Include Hard Plastics The city announced the biggest expansion of its recycling program in 25 years on Wednesday, saying all hard plastics would be accepted. This includes shampoo bottles and clothes hangers as well as countless toys and other household objects. "Starting today," Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said at a news conference in City Hall Park, "if it's a rigid plastic -- any rigid plastic -- recycle it." The city expects the move to divert 50,000 tons of waste a year from landfills - enough to fill a football field seven stories high, the mayor said - and save $850,000 a year in disposal fees alone. The expansion coincides with the opening, scheduled to take place by year's end, of what is described as the largest household recycling plant in North America - on the waterfront in Sunset Park, Brooklyn - operated by Sims Municipal Recycling. That will cut transportation costs, resulting in greater savings. The city is also hoping that simplifying the plastic-recycling system will encourage more New Yorkers to recycle all kinds of waste - including paper, which, unlike other recyclables, the city is able to sell - and further reduce the city's carbon footprint. "Right now, a lot of people don't recycle at all because the plastic part is so complicated," said Ron Gonen, the Sanitation Department's deputy commissioner for recycling. The overall cost-benefit analysis of recycling versus throwing away waste is less clear. A 2008 study by the Natural Resources Defense Council found that, over all - taking into account extra trucks, crews, fuel and other costs - recycling cost the city $17 a ton more than curbside trash disposal, but that the gap was narrowing. Mr. Gonen said that more current figures were not available but that the expansion would save money in the end because recycling trucks already making their rounds would come closer to being used at full capacity. Whether that savings would be offset by garbage trucks being used less efficiently was not immediately clear. Mr. Gonen was asked if the stated no-holds-barred policy on rigid plastics would include bowling balls. "My recommendation would be to not recycle the bowling ball," he said. I think it could have the propensity to break the equipment. The city will be sending out mailers to New Yorkers describing what can now be recycled, and how. Those, too, can be recycled.