Waste Management Services

Upper East Siders Try to Make Waste Transfer Plan Into Mayoral Issue

One neighborhood in the contentious battle over the location of the city's temporary garbage dumps is looking to up the stakes. This week, an Upper East Side community organization, Residents for Sane Trash Solutions, released a study highlighting the adverse impacts of putting a waste transfer stat ... More >>

Anthrax

Mayor Bloomberg's New Public Health Target: Styrofoam

In more ways than one, no one should really like styrofoam. It has the half-life of most nuclear substances; it doesn't really keep your coffee that hot; it litters the streets of our beloved city; and, most importantly, it indirectly costs you money. How? Landfills. Last week, the Sanitation Depar ... More >>

City and Brookfield Turn On Each Other In Lawsuits Over Zuccotti Eviction

When the police forced Occupy Wall Street protesters out of Zuccotti Park in November, they were accompanied by Department of Sanitation employees in big trucks who hauled off the demonstrators' belongings. Some of that property was ultimately recovered, but thousands of dollars worth of books, comp ... More >>

The United States Wastes an Unbelievable Amount of Food

[See More Edible News: Is Jay-Z Suing His Personal Chef Over Chicken Wings? | Fordham University: The Most Disgusting Food in the Country?] According to a recent report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, 40 percent of food in the United States is never eaten, which amounts to $165 billion a ... More >>

Staten Island's Cedar Grove Beach: Go For The Ocean Breeze, Stay For The Syringes

There's good news for intravenous drug abusers: there are free syringes washing up on the shores of New York City beaches.This, of course, is bad news for the rest of us, who don't necessarily want to get poked with a potentially deadly needle while taking a stroll on the beach.Last month, an NBC 4 ... More >>

Michael Bloomberg Talks Trash: Will Mayor's Waste-to-Energy Plan Survive Critics?

New York has a lot of trash! (Both the people-kind and the garbage can-kind.) Today, though, Mayor Mike is concerned with the latter: He wants to build what's called a waste-to-energy plant, a fancy way to describe an electricity-generating, trash-processing factory. His administration is accepting ... More >>

Life in the Pig City: New Yorkers Love Public Dumping

​Here's some good news for the giant rats galavanting through our fair city (and bad news for the rest of us who want to avoid disease): Stats show that a decent amount New Yorkers are complete dirtbags who really like to dump their trash in public.

There's a Lot of Trash in Williamsburg and Greenpoint

​Two neighborhoods in New York City are trashier than ever, at least, in a manner of speaking. According to a new study released today, there are more garbage trucks in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, where 19 of New York City's 58 waste transfer stations are located -- "362 trucks per hour at si ... More >>

That Tainted Turkey Is Still Out There; A Call for Global Salt Intake Reduction

​That salmonella-tainted turkey that's been going around? It's sickened more people, at least 107 in 31 states by now. [US News and World Report] Kraft is promoting its new Velveeta Cheesy Skillets, a line of just-add-meat pasta dinner kits, with a series of ads that invite women to "use thei ... More >>

NYPD Once Again Dumps Police Documents in Public Trashcan

via​Back in May, Bucky Turco over at Animal NY discovered a bunch of seemingly rather sensitive NYPD documents -- just a counterterrorism plan and whatnot -- plopped in a garbage can in front of NYPD's Manhattan South Task Force station at 42nd Street. He wrote about it (and so did we) hoping ... More >>

Brooklyn Once Had Huge Pot Plants Growing Wild

​In the not-so-distant past, Brooklyn was filled with marijuana plants "as tall as Christmas trees" in vacant lots, as reported by the Brooklyn Eagle in 1951. Ben Gocker, a librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library, recently found clippings in a folder called "Crime: Drugs: Marijuana," which de ... More >>

Everybody's Investigating Sanitation Snowbatoge

​So who isn't investigating The Great Snow Clean-Up Fuck-Up of 2010? After nearly a week of nonstop bitching, public agencies are finally cracking down on what went wrong with the city's blizzard response last week (or at least angling for some good publicity). The feds have reportedly launched a ... More >>

NYC Garbage Pickup Is "Egalitarian," If Snow Plowing Is Not

via Bowery Boogie​The streets may still be covered in garbage, but, hey, looking on the bright side, the Sanitation Department is being fair about it...at least according to the New York Times, which reports, "The process was, at least in appearance, more democratic than the system for snow pl ... More >>

Garbage-Pocalypse Follows Snow-Pocalypse: This Is Your Life, New York

​Gosh, don't you sort of miss the early days of the blizzard about now? It was all pretty and clean (for a moment), and we were all "trapped" on vacation. And now things are back to normal, sort of, except smellier and with more bags of trash hanging around with which to attract vermin and vom ... More >>

Day Four: Your Blizzard Post-Mortem Roundup

Daily News​Mayor Bloomberg has promised to find out why the city's blizzard response was so crappy, but the tabloids may have beat him to the punch. The Daily News has a thorough look today at what happened, while a New York Post report accuses sanitation saboteurs of purposefully slowing down the ... More >>

Sanitation Department Doesn't Even Know If Your Street Is Clear

​Has your street been cleared yet? Turns out the city's cleanup workers aren't really sure. The New York Times talked to the city's Department of Sanitation today and found that the city's method of tracking street maintenance during snowstorms is (surprise!) "notably incomplete and potential ... More >>

"New York's Appliances Caper" Is a Thing Now

Discarded appliances -- you know, the old or broken ones you leave on the curb because you don't want them anymore -- are vanishing throughout the city. But fear not! The New York Times (and the city's Department of Sanitation) are on the case.

Mayor Bloomberg Toys With Charging for Trash Collection, Nothing is Off Limits

​Budget cuts: necessary stink, but potentially smellier if trash collection moves up on Bloomberg's agenda to get our city back in the black. At a recent press conference, the mayor mentioned possibly charging residents for garbage collection as the city already does for restaurants and busine ... More >>

City Revokes Plan to Remove Memorial Ghost Bikes

​Yesterday, we reported that the Sanitation Department had proposed a removal of the approximately 67 "ghost bikes" scattered through the city in memorial to those who've died in cycling accidents. However, according the Daily News, the city has had a change of heart after an outcry from frien ... More >>

Staten Island Mob Takedown Includes Sanit Chief, Court Officer, and Head of Top Tomato

​A city Sanitation Department chief; his father-in-law, an alleged Gambino family soldier; the owner of the popular Staten Island supermarket chain, Top Tomato, long-suspected by locals of having mob ties; and a New York State Court Officer are among 22 people arrested today in an organized cr ... More >>

Is Mayor Bloomberg Expropriating City Resources to Further His Campaign?

​ NY1 reports this morning that 18-20 sanitation, anti-graffiti, and steam-cleaning trucks recently descended on Inwood in preparation for a campaign appearance by Mayor Bloomberg scheduled for that afternoon. Residents seemed astonished as city personnel removed graffiti, swept up garbage, ... More >>

Robber Killed as Getaway Car is Hit by a Truck

The man beating a woman in commission of a robbery at West 52nd and Broadway around three this morning probably thought he had it macked: when a cop car pulled up to intervene, he simply jumped into a waiting getaway car being driven by another woman, presumably of his acquaintance, and they took of ... More >>

Today's Fun Map: Top Brooklyn Polluters!

Naomi Leaves Dept. of Sanitation in Couture

Trash: NYC's Latest Fashion Trend?

Judge Trashes Bid to Block City Garbage Plan

Dumping on Everyone Else

Trash plan relieves our neighborhoods, but west of the Hudson, it's just more of the same old garbage from New York City

Garbage Fight

Union says waste kings trash a health plan for workers

The Unkindest Cuts

Lost Jobs Tough to Recycle

Waste. Not!

Fresh Kills Becomes an Urban Artwork

Trashing the Point

Residents Oppose Bronx Waste-Transfer Site

Giuliani Trashed