Results tagged “garbage”

Commuters waiting for the bus have been tossing their trash on the sidewalk and lawn in front of Rosanna Gennarelli's Bronx home — leaving her to face hundreds of dollars of littering summonses. The city has repeatedly fined the 51-year-old for violations including "scattered bottles, cigarette packs, paper bags, pieces of paper, tissue wrappers and other debris in the front yard,” hitting her with $300 tickets as recently as Nov. 14 and Nov. 19.

As you probably already know from the ranting of Lou Reed and Mad Men's John Slattery, the Sanitation Department is planning a big 'ol garbage facility on West Street between Canal and Spring Streets. The A-list locals are not happy, and have proposed an alternate plan, all whilst insisting this has nothing to do with them being rich and/or famous. Curbed reports that the bold-faced names will be gathering tomorrow night at a fancy rally; "Their aim is to gain support for Hudson Rise, an alternative proposal with a smaller and cheaper garage topped by a cute little patch of green." Stay tuned to find out if the garbage tower will be moving to your neighborhood...

Since time immemorial, the only thing protecting the world's precious banana fruit from contamination has been the boring old peel. Well, Momma Nature, it's a new millennium, and it's time for a brand new bag! So 7-Eleven has come up with a new twist on an old classic: The company will now begin individually wrapping each banana sold in its stores in plastic. It's a start, but ultimately we'd like to see each banana also packaged in a bruise-resistant Styrofoam shell.

Earlier this year Lou Reed ranted and raved over the proposed $346 million Sanitation Department facility on Spring Street. Now it's Mad Men's John Slattery (aka Roger Sterling) who is, well, mad over the city's plan, which the Daily News notes "would consolidate three sanitation districts, open up park space elsewhere, get trucks off the street into a garage and provide direct access to the West Side Highway."

Even with those handy little illustrated tip sheets on how to separate ones recycling from trash, New Yorkers are still confused! Or lazy. Or living in cramped quarters. The Daily News reports that we're throwing recyclables in the regular trash over half the time. Some blame confusion, while others point out there's simply not enough space in cramped NYC living quarters to have a separate container for everything.

The litterbugs are speaking up. Following their annual Heatwave BBQ that left Prospect Park looking more like a landfill than a public oasis, hosts of the event, MIHventures has released the following "explanation":

     

Visitors to Prospect Park this past Sunday may have noticed how their fellow park-goers chose to celebrate American independence—by trashing a few acres of park grounds. Raphael Brion was one of those visitors, and he snapped a few photos of the post-Fourth carnage to share with us on Flickr.

With the population of the city steadily growing, how are New Yorkers somehow throwing out less trash? No one seems to be able to figure out why, yet the amount of garbage and recyclables picked up by sanitation workers has been going down over each of the last four years. Reasons speculated behind the drop include a move away from glass bottles, an increase in the usage of garbage disposals in homes and even less periodicals being left on curbs due to the decline in print journalism (read all about it here on the Post's website). But experts say that none of those factors are significant enough to warrant the 7% drop in trash since 2005. Even the head of the Department of Sanitation can't wrap his head around it. Commissioner John Doherty said, "How can New York City be growing and our tonnage is going down? The fact of the matter is that's what's happening. It's amazing."

Some Greenwich Village-residing celebs are finding their garbage is a goldmine for one outdoor prowler. The NY Post notes that one recent victim is Weeds star Mary-Louise Parker -- and they report on the invasion of privacy by printing what the garbage gossip found, naturally. In an anonymous letter, it says the actress fills prescriptions for an underactive thyroid at Bigelow Pharmacy on 6th Avenue (good to know she pays her co-pay $20 at a time, just like the rest of us). Other famous targets have included Charlie Rose and Graydon Carter...perhaps this snoop should start sifting through the younger Hollywood set in order to come up with something a little more scandalous than legally prescribed goiter medication?

The hot and humid weather didn't stop a Staten Island couple from digging through a landfill to find a pair of $20,000 earrings mistakenly thrown out. WCBS 2 reports that jeweler Haya Sharon had put her earrings in a "small jar of cleaning solution," which one of their jewelry store employees "accidentally threw it away Tuesday." The Sharons contacted the Sanitation Department, which directed them to the old Fresh Kills landfill, where their trash--amid all the other collected garbage--was waiting to be compacted and shipped elsewhere. The couple found the earrings on Thursday, after 30 minutes of searching.

The city has arrested six sanitation workers and suspended over fifty others after busting them for using department trucks to collect and sell scrap metal on the side. The Sun reports that after a worker was seen using his sanitation truck compactor to “break open an air-conditioner, giving him access to a metal part and in the process releasing ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbon into the air,” investigators strategically placed CFC-free air-conditioners along collection routes in Queens, with nine employees taking the bait. "These DSNY employees took keeping discarded items on their routes to a whole new level," said the DOI commissioner.

How does the trash in your 'nabe measure up to the rest of the city's? NY Moon and Last Night's Trash documented different neighborhood's garbage, and while there's no trash-tallying competition, the discarded items speak volumes at times.

Bringing together taxidermy, freeganism and art -- Nate Hill has created a not-for-the-faint-of-heart event called the New York City Chinatown Garbage Tour. Hill is an artist who makes new animals from dead animal parts; he explains his craft: "I sew together random animal parts to make a new animal that doesn't really exist. Many of the parts I have used over the years have come from Chinatown's garbage." Earlier this year he opened his A.D.A.M. Project (A Dead Animal Man), you can view some photos here.

It's the Smoking Garbage! Lawyers for Brian McNamee, the trainer who alleges his former client Roger Clemens did inject himself with steroids, showed off photographs of alleged injection detritus. The Smoking Gun posted to photos last night and noted, among the "syringes, blood-specked gauze pads, and drug vials, "it is unclear what the significance is of the Miller Lite can seen." (ESPN reports that the can - from Clemens' 2001 NYC trash - contained drug needles!)

Outraged by the unstoppable deluge of delivery menus on your doormat and the inability of our elected officials to stem the rising tide? You are not alone! One man has decided to take matters into his own hands by designing a sticker for your apartment door to ward off unwanted promotions.

I've decided to start promoting my own solution: a simple bumper sticker that uses a helpful diagram to warn trespassers that fingers will be crushed if menus are put under the door. This has actually made a huge difference in reducing the number of menus arriving at my house.

Yesterday the NY Post warned non-recyclers that they'd have to don a "scarlet litter" if they didn't clean up their acts. We hoped this "scarlet litter" would be a hat hand-crafted by a Freegan and worn atop the heads of the environmentally-challenged, but instead it's something much more sensible: a clear bag for all of your garbage that leaves little to the imagination. New York, we don't really want to see your trash, so please try to figure out this whole recycling thing, m'kay?

If warnings and summonses do not induce residents to separate their recyclables from the rest of the trash, the city will force them to put all their garbage into clear plastic bags and endure routine inspections.

Continue reading "City Shames the Non-Green"

It’s that time of year again when New Yorkers debate how much to tip the – deep breath – doorman, super, handyman, locker room attendant, trainer, baby sitter, dog walker, beauty salon, cleaning person, day care center, garbage collector, mail carrier, paperboy and parking attendant(s). Sewell Chan, the Times’s Man on the Web, has tied himself to the tipping post with a 1,780 word monograph on the subject, largely sourced from Doorman, a book by Professor Peter Bearman, statistician and sociology professor at Columbia University.

MTV network freelancers took their beef to the streets yesterday in protest of changes to their benefits plan; about two hundred of the workers spent the afternoon picketing outside the Times Square headquarters of MTV's parent company Viacom. According to Gawker, an initial chant of “What the fuck?!” was revised into the catchier “We care about our 401(k)s!” after a reportedly winsome young rabble-rouser climbed atop a garbage can and helped brainstorm new chant...

The bicyclist who died while riding on the Manhattan Bridge Friday night was identified as 27-year-old Brooklyn resident Sam Hindy. Hindy's father Stephen, a former Middle East correspondent for the AP and Newsday reporter who later co-founded the Brooklyn Brewery, said, "We're just devastated. This is the worst thing that could happen to any parent. It's any parent's worst nightmare." Sam Hindy and a friend were riding back from Manhattan to Brooklyn on the upper...

The Gotham Gazette has a fairly comprehensive overview of the unpleasant byproducts associated with densely populated living: garbage. The details are illuminating, 64,000 tons of weekly garbage that amounts to 7 billion pounds every year. The feature is an examination of the accumulation of daily decisions that New Yorkers make every day about the things they consume and dispose of. Paper, plastic, food waste, electronics, and other things we throw in the trash add up...

Could this be an instance where Con Ed isn't to blame? The utility says that a garbage truck may have compromised the sidewalk grate a young woman fell through earlier this year! In May, a woman fell 10-12 feet through sidewalk grating outside 150 West 51st street. Luckily, Jessica Hinksmon only suffered minor injuries, narrowly avoiding being electrocuted by an electrical transformer. Con Ed says that a video shows a private sanitation truck driving...

Yesterday was the city's day to honor and remember veterans of the U.S. armed forces. The 88th annual Veterans Day Parade started with the Eternal Light Monument Ceremony in Madison Square Park, followed by a parade up Fifth Avenue to 56th Street. An estimated 20,000 gathered for the parade, and there were veterans from World War II, Korean War, and the Iraq War. Mayor Bloomberg said, "You should know that 70 New Yorkers have given...

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an attempted bank robbery on East 23rd St. in Manhattan, a pedestrian struck on 82nd St. and Central Park West in Manhattan, and a homicide on Grand Ave. in Brooklyn.
• The politics of succession in the world of Masters of the Universe. Changing places, changing times, unsurpassable ambition.
• Sometimes the old is new: when a garbage hauling-controlling family tells you to do something, you do it, or they'll burn your company down.
• Mayor Bloomberg is displeased with an audit that criticizes his predecessor for a golf course construction deal that led to millions being paid to a mobbed-up company moving dirt from one place to another.
• New York State is joining a multi-state lawsuit against the federal government over global warming issues.
• Stop-and-frisks by the NYPD were down 11% in the latest quarter that it reported to the City Council.
• A suit has been brought against New York State with the shocking allegation that perhaps indigent people aren't provided adequate legal defense.
• The 71-year-old woman dumped unconscious on the sidewalk in front of a bogus dentist's office died.

The elements that have made City Hall Park so attractive to New York's humans have also made the area hospitable to the city's rodent population--so much so that the park has become overrun with rats, who don't seem to mind people company as much as people mind rat company. Regardless of the time of day or the number of people congregating there, rats--lots and lots of them--have made City Hall park their home. The New...

It's Election Day, which means it's time for people to go to the polls. City offices and public schools are closed, and alternate side of the street parking is suspended, as are garbage and recycling pick-up. It's an optional state holiday; federal offices are open and there is mail delivery. While there aren't many big races, there are a few notable ones, namely the Staten Island District Attorney's race which pits incumbent Daniel Donovan (R)...

Forget terrorists or crippling airline delays: Cats are enemy number one at JFK Airport. After years of airport and airline employees taking care of the many feral cats who make Kennedy their home, the Port Authority is trapping the cats. Rescue groups are worried, because the cats are feral, they are very unlikely to be placed in homes - which means they will probably be killed.

Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Quinn urged the State Assembly to pass a bill authorizing the marine transfer station at the Gansevoort Pier. The MTS, part of the city's Solid Waste Management Plan, would handle recyclable paper, metal, glass and plastic and would help to ease garbage truck traffic. Bloomberg said there would be "a disaster" if the plan doesn't pass.

A crane at One Bryant Park, aka the Bank of America tower on Sixth Avenue between 42nd and 43rd Streets, reportedly lost some materials it was carrying. Curbed is reporting that the materials/debris/ garbage bin fell at least 35 floors - and it looks like a cab was hit. A Gothamist reader who works near the building writes:

Our windows look out at the construction site and it looks like some beams were dropped right onto Sixth avenue. No cars were crushed, but I couldn't tell if anyone was hurt or not (there were ambulances at the scene). Sixth ave is closed off north of 42nd and half of 42nd St is now closed, too. We've been told by our building management to stay away from the windows on the Sixth avenue side and the entrance to the building is closed - we're using a service entrance now.

Oh, no, is the city going to ban the purchase of Crayola Sidewalk Chalk? The Brooklyn Paper exposes the "new face of vandalism?": 6-year-old Natalie Shea, whose mother got a warning letter from the Department of Sanitation about the chalk drawings her daughter drew on their front stoop. The letter read, “PLEASE REMOVE THE GRAFFITI FROM YOUR PROPERTY. FAILURE TO COMPLY … MAY RESULT IN ENFORCEMENT ACTION AGAINST YOU.”