If there’s one thing we know how to do in New York, it’s pile everything up. People, floors, money, talent, bullshit — and our garbage. Welcome to HotGarbageMonth, Curbed's deep dive into the trash chutes, bags, bins, and trucks of New York City
Kent Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn Photo: Thomas Prior If there’s one thing we know how to do in New York, it’s pile everything up. People, floors, social strata, obligations, money, talent, bullshit. And, at the end of the line, our garbage. For five decades starting in the late 1940s, most everything we discarded from our homes went into one big heap on Staten Island. Incredibly, the Fresh Kills landfill was not named for its garbage heap but for the pure water that once ran there .
When the collection of our local trash piles has stopped, the city reacts abruptly, with dismay. At least four times in the 20th century , the Department of Sanitation has gone on strike. Those work stoppages were varyingly effective, but the last couple worked, if for no other reason than that the sidewalk situation got very bad very quickly. The 1981 strike lasted 17 days, but at least it happened in December.
The boom of the past 25 years, in which more than a million people poured into the city, has brought with it more garbage. So has a huge increase in consumption, especially throwaway packaging. Certainly your average apartment building puts out a lot more corrugated cardboard on recycling day than it did before Amazon came along. The COVID crisis, with its attendant shortages of labor and tax money, led to temporary cuts in trash pickup, which can’t have helped.
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