NEW YORK (AP) – For half a century, New York City residents have taken out their trash by throwing plastic bags full of smelly trash directly onto the sidewalk.
When the bags inevitably tear or open, they spill waste onto the street, providing a feast for rats. In winter, pieces of garbage are buried under the snow and remain frozen for days, sometimes weeks, reinforcing the city’s reputation as dirty.
Now, New Yorkers are slowly adapting to a completely new custom, at least for America’s largest city: putting their trash in bins. With seams.
Earlier this month, it became mandatory for all residential buildings with less than 10 housing units to use covered containers. That’s the majority of residential properties. All businesses in the town had to start using containers earlier this year.
“I know this must sound unusual to anyone listening to this who lives in almost any other city in the world,” said Jessica Tisch, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, who oversaw the new measures before becoming the city’s new police commissioner this week. “But it’s revolutionary by New York City standards because, for 50 years, we’ve been put all the garbage directly on the sides.”
Residents who have dumped trash in closed containers elsewhere agree it’s time for New York City to catch up.
“You see open plastic bags of food rotting and stuffing and then it’s leaking onto the sidewalk and into the street,” said John Midgley, who owns a brownstone in Brooklyn and who has lived in London, Paris and Amsterdam. “The stench builds up week after week, after week. “
Homes, businesses and institutions in New York City leave approximately 20 million kilograms (44 million pounds) of trash at the curb each day, of which approximately 11 million kilograms (24 million pounds) are picked up by the city’s sanitation department. Much of the rest is handled by private waste collectors.
In the early 20th century, New York City required garbage to be placed in metal cans. But in the era before plastic bags were widely used, garbage was dumped directly into the bins, making them dirty and greasy.
Then, in 1968, the city’s sanitation workers went on strike. For more than a week, garbage cans overflowed. Piles of garbage piled up on the sidewalks and spilled into the streets like a dystopian nightmare.
Plastic bag makers donated thousands of bags to help clean up the mess, and New Yorkers never looked back, said Steven Cohen, a dean at Columbia University who specializes in public affairs.
“That had to do with convenience,” he said. “After the strike, sanitation workers preferred the modern promotion of lighter, apparently cleaner, sealable plastic bags. “
The plastic kept odors inside more, compared to the old metal containers. A worker could easily grab the neck of a bag and throw it into a truck.
But the administration of Democratic Mayor Eric Adams is considering piles of garbage bags Public Enemy No. 1 in the well-documented war against the city’s notorious rats.
Rats have little trouble getting into a plastic bag. Containers with stones should be closed and locked, in theory, to do a better job of keeping them out.
The container requirement, which came into effect on November 12, comes with its own challenges. Among them: finding a place to roll away large containers in neighborhoods where most buildings don’t have patios, alleys or garages. Homeowners and homeowners also have to pick up empty containers and bring them back from the curb in the morning, which they didn’t have to do with plastic bags.
Caitlin Leffel, who lives in Manhattan, said residents in her building had to hire someone “at an incredibly high cost” to take the bins out the night before and bring them back three times a week. week.
“I know there are problems with the way this city has picked up trash for years,” he said. “But the way this program has been implemented has not taken into account many of the things that live in New York City.
Construction superintendents also complain about the extra work involved in bringing ships back from the brink.
“This has completely reorganized our lives,” said Dominick Romeo, founder of NYC Building Supers, a group of construction managers who recently demonstrated outside City Hall against the new requirements. ‘ run like crazy.”
Finally, larger residential buildings – those with more than 31 units – will have their own designated container on the street. New garbage trucks built with self-loading side arms—another innovation already common in many other countries—then empty them.
The improvements should make waste collection easier and cleaner, even if it takes collectors longer to make their rounds, says Harry Nespoli, president of the union which represents about 7,000 people. -city sanitation work.
For now, he says, workers are still dumping trash into their trucks by hand, which has its own problems.
“In some places, they don’t even use bags. They just put the trash in the bins,” said Nespoli. “It’s going to take time to get everyone to do it the right way, but at the end of the day, it’s our job to build it. “
Tisch believes that New Yorkers will eventually adapt to the new reality.
For now, city officials are issuing written warnings about non-compliance. Not everyone knows about the new rules yet. But starting January 2nd, fines between $50 and $200 will go into effect.
“No one wants to live on a dirty street,” Tisch said. “No one wants to walk past a pile of rubbish and waste juice on their way to work or on their way home from school with their children.”
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Philip Marcelo is in X as @philmarcelo
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This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the help of a generational artificial intelligence engine.
2024-11-27 06:18:00
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