New York is the most famous city in the world. But the Big Apple is not only known for the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, but also for huge mountains of rubbish. There are definitely solutions – but no agreement.
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The stench on this summer evening is unbearable. It hangs sweet and heavy in the air of 90th Street on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. White and green garbage bags pile up in front of a red brick house with a double door and a wreath of flowers. A young woman with red curly hair bends over one of the sacks and shouts: “Books!” “It’s on my reading list!” She shouts and fishes out a book. It is the first item that goes into a small car. More books will follow; She leaves another pile in the sack, which she knots again neatly. The young woman doesn’t want to overcrowd the car right at the beginning of the evening: “Who knows what I’ll find today.” But she still takes a few photos of the books and a large fake houseplant and posts them to the Facebook group “Buy nothing” – including location information. If she doesn’t need it, then maybe someone else.
Anna Sacks is a trashwalker – at least that’s what she calls herself. A few times a week she goes out looking in the trash of households and companies for things that are still usable. These can be packaged hygiene products that a large drugstore chain has rejected; She often finds curiosities, designer fashion and expensive tableware in private rubbish – she either keeps the things or donates them. “When it has been made, it can be used” is their motto. Some things only have to be washed off once. She doesn’t mind the smell anymore, she says, she doesn’t feel disgusted with anything – not even with a sticky poker case with cards and chips.
The 30-year-old has been doing her trashwalks since 2018. She shares her prey on social networks such as Tiktok and Instagram. According to Sacks, New Yorkers lack awareness of what can be recycled or properly disposed of – or lack of time: when moving, sometimes entire home furnishings end up in the trash.
Sacks also digs through the rubbish of companies like Starbucks or large drug stores. In January 2020, New York Post escorted Sacks when they searched Starbucks rubbish and found the coffeehouse chain “throwing away a feast of unsold food every night.” A week after posting their story, Starbucks announced new goals to reduce waste. Another prominent opponent: the drugstore chain CVS. According to Sacks, the company is throwing away unopened goods – from plasters to sandwiches that are about to expire. Sacks says she saved and donated 50 pounds of groceries and other items from CVS in one year. The woman, who hasn’t been disgusted with rubbish for a long time, says: “It’s so disgusting that companies do this instead of helping people.”
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No matter who you ask in New York about the city’s garbage problem, the answer is often the same: a frustrated sigh followed by a lengthy problem diagnosis. The Mayor of New York’s Office of Technology and Innovation wants to make the city a smart city. Some of the planned smart city systems also address the issue of waste management. But there is nothing smart about New York waste management, says Asher Freeman: “In New York we are still pretty old-school regulating waste.” He works for New York City Councilor Antonio Reynoso as director of land use. Reynoso is also the chairman of the city’s hygiene and waste management committee. By “oldschool” Freeman means the trucks for the garbage disposal, in which the employees throw garbage bags because the vehicles do not have an electric arm to lift bins. The plastic bags are not only difficult to get into the truck, they are also an ugly sight, permeable to smell – and rats chewed their way through quickly. Freeman therefore wants to set up garbage cans to make the garbage at least presentable.
In 2020, New York City residents were producing nearly 12,000 tons of waste every day, according to a report by the Department of Hygiene. For comparison: in Berlin half as many people produce a third of the amount every day. Together with the garbage from companies, 3.2 million tons of garbage are created each year, which a fleet of 2,000 municipal garbage trucks and around 90 private waste disposal companies fight against. And the truck is only the beginning of a kilometer-long journey that the garbage is embarking on: New York has neither its own garbage dumps nor incineration plants. About two-thirds of household waste goes to an incinerator in Essex County, New Jersey, and the rest of the city’s non-recyclable waste goes to landfills and incinerators in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia. This is particularly harmful to the environment because the trucks have to drive the garbage hundreds of kilometers across the country – and it is expensive: the transport alone costs the Department of Sanitation US $ 429 million each year.
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“Who knows what I’ll find today.”
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The city could save by viewing waste electricity as a resource, says Steve Cohen. He worked for the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) in the 1970s and 80s and is now executive director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. “You (the New York government, note) are missing out on a precious opportunity,” he says. Cities would have to try to extract resources from the recycled material. In addition, cities are less attractive for companies if “the stink of garbage is blowing towards them at the airport”. “It also means cities are losing potential tax revenue,” says Cohen.
Asher Freeman and Councilor Reynoso are not only working on recycling systems, they are also working to ensure that New York is reducing its overall amount of waste. The current Mayor Bill de Blasio has set himself the goal of not sending any waste to the landfill by 2030. “We are far from that, and we have made almost no progress in de Blasio’s tenure,” says Freeman. He and Reynoso therefore propose paid garbage, among other things: Every household receives a quota of garbage bags for free – those who make more garbage have to pay per bag.
But Freeman admits that the concept is not that easy to implement. Because many before him have already bitten their teeth on the garbage in New York. “The subject is politically unsexy,” he says. That is why nothing has changed in the system for 60 years. And also when the garbage bags pile up on the pavement on certain days of the week and the rats run back and forth – a few hours later the garbage is gone. “It works just well enough that it is not an issue for people,” says Freemann.
Two thirds of New York’s waste consists of metal, glass, paper and plastic – materials that are very easy to recycle. While food scraps are more difficult to reuse, they could be composted, turned into fertilizer, and used in New York parks, says Clare Miflin, co-chair of the Zero Waste Design environmental committee at the Center for Architecture in New York. There is already such a project in Domino Park in Williamsburg on New York’s East River: in 2018, after the park opened, the architecture firm Two Trees Management began collecting leftover food from local restaurants and cafes and converting it into compost for use in the park . Garden waste from the park is combined with food waste. The mixture results in higher quality compost than from landscape waste alone. It’s also better for the trees, which grow faster and can filter more CO2 out of the city air, explains Miflin.
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“However, it has to start with the companies that manufacture packaging and consumer goods, which in turn end up in the trash,” says Miflin. The idea of the circular economy must therefore be a central one. The circular economic model offers an alternative to the current system, which critics describe as “Take, Make, Waste”. The circular economy is naturally regenerative and restorative and keeps resources circulating for as long as possible. “The model builds on the core principles of avoiding waste and pollution and keeping products and materials in use as long as possible,” says Cohen.
For this, packaging and products would have to be designed differently and more reusable packaging would have to be used for food and take-away meals and drinks. In the US, 80% of products are used only once and then thrown away. Supermarkets should be obliged to donate leftover products. These are classic approaches that Anna Sacks also preaches.
The closed loops appear much more futuristic, large vacuum cleaners at the end of a garbage can. The garbage is sucked in through an underground pipe and sent further through a tunnel system to an underground warehouse, where it is sorted and disposed of accordingly. The result: no garbage bags on the curb, no garbage trucks on the street. What sounds like an absolute utopia is already being developed and used: The residents of a housing estate in London empty their rubbish into three corresponding bins. As soon as these are full, the garbage is sucked into a tunnel. It is then collected underground, and when this warehouse is full again, the garbage is packed into containers, picked up by trucks and transported to one of several inner-city recycling centers. The system comes from the Swedish company Envac.
While much of the effort is aimed at consumption, and thus at the consumer, Steve Cohen says, political solutions are also needed. “It needs government intervention, and investment and technology are needed,” says Cohen. “None of this is currently regulated.” When it comes to recycling, just relying on the consumer is not sufficiently effective. The garbage should first be sorted in the recycling plant and recycled accordingly – using smart technology. This would also avoid having to use different vehicles for different types of waste, which would reduce fuel consumption. Cohen: “I think this is the future. She’s not here yet, but she’s coming. “
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Text: Sophie Schimansky
Photos: Nachman Blizinsky
This article appeared in our 7–21 issue on the topic of “Smart Cities”.
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