In a sign that New York City is getting serious about improving its poor recycling record, the city’s Department of Sanitation is appointing a recycling industry innovator as its new “deputy commissioner for recycling and sustainability.”

Department of Sanitation

The department plans to formally announce next week that Ron Gonen, 37, is assuming the newly created position to help the Bloomberg administration meet its goal of at least doubling the city’s recycling rate from the current 15 percent by the year 2017.

Mr. Gonen is a founder of Recyclebank, a company that awards points to consumers for recycling that they can redeem at local and national restaurants, stores and other retailers. He is also a co-founder of an environmental services firm that helps bring renewable energy to sport stadiums .

‘Ron’s years of work in the recycling and sustainability field perfectly matches the needs that we have at the D.S.N.Y. so that we can meet the mayor’s specific goals,” the city’s sanitation commissioner, John J. Doherty, said in a statement.

In an interview, Mr. Gonen said he would focus first on beefing up two areas in which New York lags other cities: the number of recycling bins placed alongside trash cans in public spaces and the curbside collections of food scraps for composting.



The city has fewer than 1,000 recycling bins on streets and in parks, compared with about 25,000 wastebaskets. And the sanitation department has just started collecting food waste at farmer’s markets.

Mr. Gonen said he would move “aggressively” to increase the number of recycling bins in public spaces and to begin pilot programs for curbside collection of organic trash.“We need to make it very convenient for people to recycle,” he said.

Mr. Gonen, who has an M.B.A. from Columbia University’s Business School and currently teaches as an adjunct professor there, said that public awareness campaigns must also emphasize the financial benefits of recycling, in that the city saves money by not sending trash to landfills.

He said he planned to enlist consumer product companies and manufacturers in helping with the marketing and financing of new recycling programs.

“If you can make recycling successful in New York City, it can have reverberating effects,” he said.

Mr. Gonen takes over on May 14.