Why is there so much trash on the streets of New York City?
"Thank God for the rain which has helped wash away the garbage and trash off the sidewalks. ... Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets."Street-level conditions in Manhattan are, at best, tolerable, at worst, so bad that they approach third world standards of unpleasantness. For the premier city of the USA this is just unacceptable, and, as others have mentioned, does not necessarily need to be this way, given that there are similarly busy (cf. residentially dense) cities around the world that manage to be much cleaner.There are numerous factors at play:1. An ingrained, in part collective cultural, mentality: New Yorkers are collectively prone to apathetic behavior when it comes to cleanliness, throwing trash liberally out of vehicles, onto the subway tracks, sidewalks, and so on, and this rubs off onto others subliminally.2. Recent cutbacks in DSNY funding, leading to depleted numbers of sanitation staff and reduced trash collections. Also poor standards of professionalism among sanitation workers.3. Removal of trashcans and poor access to public bathrooms, explaining the puddles of mystery fluid one encounters every few dozen yards in some areas of Manhattan.4. A filter-down mentality from the powers that be: Infrastructure is often left dilapidated and in disrepair, many potholes in the streets, crumbling, offensively smelly stairways, cracks in the sidewalks with weeds growing through. This means that New York still feels filthy, even when the trash/organic waste is adequately disposed of.5. A high concentration of dog ownership, with not enough being done to crack down on those who fail to clean up after their pets. This is bad throughout Manhattan, but unbearable in neighborhoods such as the East Village and around parts of Gramercy and Washington Heights.
Is it legal for my landlord to pick through my trash.?
i took pictures of his taking my trash and he evicted me? i was at this building for 5 years and when he saw me taking pictures he also stated i could not longer putting trash in the garbage. there is nothing in my lease stating how many bags of trash i can put out and i always pay my rent on time? is this possibley harrassment?
What do I do about someone throwing their trash in my trash can?
The other answer was good advice, but at the same time, I wouldn’t confront the person. Photograph, or video the “evidence”. Also, because people can be really stupid….. Open up the trash and look inside it. You will probably find something to identify the person doing this, like a piece of mail, etc. I don’t know what your details are specifically. If you contract a separate business to come get your trash, or if you are in a city where the city picks it up. Either way, my first call would be to your City or County Code Enforcement office. Some cities have a code enforcement department strictly for solid waste. What is going on is illegal dumping. It’s technically the definition of illegal dumping. I would start there before going to the Law Enforcement. LE will usually kick it to CE. More than likely, there is a county or city code that mentions illegal dumping. I used to do solid waste code enforcement, and when and where I did it, it can carry up to a $500 fine. That was even in residential situations. I always found that if Code shows up, they can explain it to the person, and basically do the “confronting”. They will tell them there is now a record of this, and if they do it again….. time for a fine.
I love throwing trash out my car window?
You cant be serious and are kidding right? I just can believe anyone could be so incredibly stupid and naive to think that throwing trash out your window for someone else to pick up is ok. Who do you think picks up your trash anyway - Oh yeah that's right city workers pick it up and who do you think pays those city workers to pick up your trash - Oh that's right your tax dollars pay for that not to mention it shows absolutely zero respect for where you and the unfortunate others that have to put up with people like you live. That trash you toss out can also blow into lakes rivers, streams and forests all causing damage to the environment not to mention neighborhoods and kids playgrounds etc. I really don't mean to insult you but you definitely got a rise out of me please for all of us put you trash where it belongs.
Why are there so few public trash cans in Taiwan?
Because of the Trash collecting policy in Taiwan.Unlike the USA, there are no community dumpers that you can throw your trash in, and have the city to come pick it up every few days.The Taiwan City Cleaners only drives their trash trucks, and give you a very small window of time to put your home trash to their trucks.Leaving your trash/trash bin on the street is illegal and subject to fine.So... with this system, if you have many public trash cans, then lazy people (people who don't want to wait for the trash trucks to come) will just use these public trash can as public dumpers and throw their trash there, and very soon you will find a pile of trash near these public trash cans.Taiwan Trash Collective Policy is to FORCE people to reduce their trash, so it is designed to be inconvenient
Why is residential and commercial trash not placed in dumpsters for collection in New York City? Is there a historically good reason for this?
Great question.Restaurants and residential homes in New York City leave their trash on the street because New York was built without alleys.New York’s grid system is absolutely genius, particularly because of the fact that it extends outside of Manhattan despite the boroughs being almost entirely farmland or untamed wilderness at the time the system was laid out. The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 is one of the most prescient examples of urban planning in world history. Unfortunately, the grid system was built out before there was a clear answer to municipal trash collection. New York was still in the experimental stages when it came to figuring out how to handle its trash, and as such people would just throw their trash onto the street, to be picked through by dogs, pigs, and waste collectors. As such, they neglected to include back alleys where trash could be stored. So New York’s trash collection ends up looking like this:While Chicago’s looks like this:There’s no going back now!
Is it considered trespassing if you go in your own alley way?
Trespassing is going onto property that is in the legal possession of another without consent. If you own the property, or you are the person in possession (you lease it or rent it) then you are not trespassing. If you own the property,, but have leased or rented it to someone else, and don't have their permission or legal authority, you are trespassing. If it is a public alley then presumably any member of the public has permission to be there and you would not be trespassing. Am I missing something?
What do you do if you miss trash day?
Man, it totally sucks if that happens. I always put my trash out the night before (usually the late afternoon of the day before) just to make sure that doesn’t happen, because when it does…. not pretty.The entire city of New York found that out in 1975, when the sanitation workers went out on strikeSo, strategies…I’ve got an SUV with weather mats in the back. I can “cheat” and load bags up and drive around until I find, um, “un-attended” dumpsters and offload my cargo. That’s, you know, sort of not completely legal, but hey, it was sitting there, open, saying “give me your eggshells, your moldy bread, the crumpled masses of used paper towel, the wretched refuse that didn’t go down the garbage disposal”….But it does make me think. Does this really need to go in the trash, or is there something else we can do with it? So a lot more stuff winds up in recycling (where I’ve got more space, most weeks). And a lot more of the food waste goes down the disposal. And everything gets crunched up as small at it will go.But still, you wind up with bags and bags of stuff that has to go somewhere. Since the coyotes pretty much wiped out the local feral cat and raccoon population, I could, in theory just leave the bags behind the fence waiting, but… if anything DOES get into them, I’ve got crap all over the yard, my neighbor’s yard, etc. Not cool. Super not cool.So when I hit the wall on that, it’s off in search of an outside repository.I did catch a neighbor once with a moderately innovative solution. He was up in the 3AM-4AM period, taking smaller bags of his stuff and walking around the neighborhood dropping them in the big containers of all the neighbors. You’d notice if someone dropped a 35 gallon kitchen bag on you, but a couple of take-out food size bags? Not so much. So that’s how he solved it. Well, until I caught him anyway…
I forgot to take out the trash out for the week what do i do?
I forgot to take out the trash out to the street for the week so the city truck can pick it up. They are all full and this weeks trash will not fit in there...What can i do? is there somewhere that i can take it or have the city pick it up or something? im worried because my folks come home this weekend and they will find that our tenants will be putting their trash AROUND the trash cans instead of in it.