The Story Behind NYC Trash Piles

Trash collection is a timeless New York City problem. On collection day, one can pass piles of garbage bags along the streets of Manhattan. In the 2018 fiscal year, DSNY collected nearly 11,800 tons of waste and recycling per day alone. All of it ended up on the curbside.

The New York City Council is currently debating a bill that would overhaul the commercial trash collection industry. The bill, introduced in May and sponsored by twenty council members, proposes that “commercial collection zones” be put in place. Each zone would be exclusive to a single private collection company in an effort to reduce carbon emissions. The bill does not confront the disposal of the trash itself, a weekly nuisance to New Yorkers.

Piles of trash? 

“Between five and ten o’clock you are walking alongside garbage,” Christine Berthet, co-founder and Vice President of the Clinton Hell’s Kitchen Chelsea Coalition for Pedestrian Safety (CHEKPEDS), lamented. “The garbage staging is completely overwhelming.”

Garbage staging refers to the way waste is stored while it waits for collection, like the use of industrial trash bins. In New York, things work a little bit differently. 

On recycling pick-up days, the trash can completely obstruct the sidewalks, Berthet said. Like clockwork, businesses will set their trash out for pickup, forcing locals to navigate a labyrinth of refuse.

“The other day some large building put everything out,” she recalled, “and there were mountains of bags.”

Berthet has been living in Hell’s Kitchen for forty years. The storage dilemma has been around for as long as she can remember.

Why the street?

The reason why trash is piled on the curb is a simple one: there is nowhere else for it to go. Hells Kitchen has no alleys where trash can be stored, Berthet explained. The same is true for much of Manhattan. This is due to a choice made over 200 years ago.

In 1800, New York had a population of 60,515 and didn’t extend far past Houston Street, but exponential growth was expected in the next century. The New York City Council commissioned Founding Father Gouverneur Morris, Surveyor General of New York Simon de Witt, and former New Jersey senator John Rutherford in 1807 to produce a development plan for the island. After four years of research, the trio presented the Commissioner’s Plan of 1811. Modern-day New Yorkers know it as The Grid, Manhattan’s street system from 14th Street to 155th Street.

The Grid was designed to maximize land use. Developers built side by side to increase a city block’s economic potential.

“You could max out a block’s return by building with party walls,” Jessie Reiser, architect at Reiser Umemoto Reiser DPC, said. A “party wall” is a shared partition between structures. “It uses the total area of the block and you don’t have to build two separate walls for adjoining properties.” 

The wall-to-wall construction did away with alleys and side streets that were more common in the downtown area. With no back streets for garbage staging areas, buildings have one of two options, according to Michael Bellino, president of Liberty Ashes Incorporated, a private waste collection company.

“A building either sets the trash on the curb for someone like me to pick it up, or there are containers and receptacles inside that we come in and empty out.”

Today, setting trash bags on the curbside is the norm for most buildings. 

What is being done to fix the problem?

At the moment, nothing. Bellino, who is also a member of the commercial waste hauling advocacy group New Yorkers for Responsible Waste Management, stated that nothing has been put forward regarding garbage staging. The group is currently focused on the commercial zoning bill.

“There’s no difference in the methodology of the way we remove [garbage] in any proposal at this point in time,” Bellino said.

The Department of Sanitation has no answers either. It opened up proposals to the public in May of this year. CHEKPEDS submitted a proposal in June.

“I don’t think they are focused on it,” Berthet said, expressing her impatience with a perceived lack of interest from the department. Three months after submitting, CHEKPEDS has not heard a response.

“This is the way it has been done and people accepted it.”