Recycling Manager

He showed early interest in taking action to improve society by protesting against racial discrimination. Later, his service in a minor role within a large city government led to a leadership position for promoting a cleaner environment. 

FAMILY BACKGROUND

Brendon John Sexton (BS) was born in Detroit. His father was a sociology professor and a union leader within the college faculty. His mother was also a university professor who at times had taught at the high school level.  

(Editor’s note – ‘Sociology’ is the study of the development, structure and functioning of human society, including human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. Traditional focuses of sociology include social stratification, social class, social mobility, religion, secularization, law, sexuality, gender, and deviance.

Social research has influence throughout various industries and sectors of life, such as among politicians, policy makers, legislators, educators, government planners, real estate developers and business managers. 

No wonder, thinks this Editor, that having absorbed conversations about sociology issues with his parents while at the home dinner table, that BS grew to appreciate the importance of people caring for each other within society.)

EDUCATION

After graduating from high school, BS earned a Bachelor’s degree at NYU (New York University) in experimental psychology. He would later return to the same university as a clinical professor at its graduate school of public service. 

INSPIRED TOWARD PUBLIC SERVICE

As a teenager, BS was arrested for participating in civil rights demonstrations as a member of the Congress of Racial Equality (C.O.R.E.). He was also a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War of the 1960s into early 1970s. 

While still a college undergraduate, BS was one of the founders of a treatment program for young drug abusers that operated in the Greenwich Village section of New York City. 

During a New York City fiscal crisis – when the city could not pay its bills promptly and had to be funded on an emergency basis by other government’s revenues – BS’ employment was terminated by the city’s Addiction Services Agency, although formally he was only ‘laid off’ but either way, he was no longer employed. 

DEDICATION TO HIS WORK EARNED NOTICE AND RESPECT BY HIS MANAGERS

A year later, BS became director of the city’s Department of Investigation and two years thereafter, was named deputy director of the city’s Office of Operations, soon promoted to the office’s director, reporting directly to the Deputy Mayor, who said of BS: “When BS was at the investigation department, he would periodically criticize me (the eventual deputy mayor) for one thing or another. I found his presence kind of troublesome (annoying). But when I became deputy mayor, BS was the first person I called to come over and work for me. I let him loose on the entire city government, and no one was ever safe from criticism for their lack of job performance after that.”

BS’ dedication to his work, including being a ‘stickler’ about others performing their tasks satisfactorily, led to his eventual appointment as New York City’s Sanitation Commissioner, when New York City had promised its citizens and other government entities at the federal and state level, that the city would proceed with what at the time was the nation’s most ambitious, mandatory garbage recycling program. 

His campaign for curbside recycling had the greatest impact on New Yorkers. Following BS’ public and private lobbying of the local politicians, the City Council passed legislation requiring millions of households to bundle newspapers, magazines and cardboard and separate them from other trash, and to place glass bottles and metal cans in their own plastic bags or receptacles for curbside pickup. The new rules were to be phased in over the next several years. 

“What we are doing is working a cultural revolution, a social revolution,” said BS in his role as Sanitation Commissioner. “We are changing the way property owners manage their property, the way householders manage their kitchens.”

During BS’ tenure as sanitation ‘czar’, landlords were ordered to phase out incinerators in apartment houses. The city also embarked on a pilot resource-recovery program that burned garbage, generating steam to be sold to the local power utility company, and began an experiment to capture methane gas from landfills. 

PUBLIC SERVICE GOAL IS WORTHWHILE DESPITE LESS THAN 100% SUCCESS

BS’ personal and publicly stated recycling goal was to have 25 percent of the city’s garbage recycled within five years. But with the city facing another budget gap, the program proved prohibitively expensive. As of 2023, according to the NYC Sanitation Department, only about 17 percent of all the city’s garbage is recycled. 

CHALLENGE – DISPOSAL OF RECYCLED MATERIALS

The challenge of disposing of millions of tons of solid waste annually captured national attention in the summer of 1987, when BS oversaw the ill-fated launch of what was probably the most famous garbage barge in history, the ‘Mobro 4000.”

With its landfill sites full, the city sought other places to buy solid waste. The Mobro, filled with 3,000 tons of garbage, departed from a city suburb, Long Island. But after the material was rejected by six states and three countries out of fear that it was contaminated with medical waste, the barge lumbered back to New York, ending its 162-day, 6-mile odyssey at a Sanitation Department incinerator in Brooklyn, one of the five boroughs within the city. 

ENERGETIC PUBLIC SERVANT 

After BS voluntarily departed his leadership post as Sanitation Commissioner, with wide praise for his dedicated efforts, he found other ways to serve the public:

• Oversaw the Municipal Art Society’s mandate for historic preservation, the Times Square Alliance, and its millennial celebration.
• Led the South Street Seaport Museum as it struggled to advance from municipal stewardship.
• Pursued a program under which vehicles that ignored alternate-side parking regulations were plastered with lurid chartreuse stickers proclaiming that they were illegally obstructing mechanical street sweepers (City Council ended that program after a few years of widespread citizen protests)

CAREER SATISFACTION

One of the deputy mayors under which BS had served, said that BS was a ‘first-rate analytic talent who also possessed strong administrative skills and savvy. He demonstrated an ability to navigate complex issues and collaborate with diverse political stakeholders, skills that enabled progress on things like launching the city’s landmark recycling system and cleaning up Times Square.”

An attorney and the city’s Environmental Director for a natural resources group, said, “BS was a great friend of our environment and one of the nicest people to anyone and everyone who met him. Even when he was delivering bad news, he did it in a way that made you want to like him.”

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This career story is based on several sources including an obituary written by Sam Roberts, published by The New York Times on November 20, 2023, plus internet research including Wikipedia.