‘Talking trash’ has a different connotation here in Bay Ridge. Most residents with trash to throw on Fourth Avenue are wondering: “Where have all the trashcans gone?”
In May, Bay Ridge’s Community Board 10 embarked on a ‘counter-intuitive’ experiment to combat the problem of littering in the neighborhood by asking the Department of Sanitation to remove all trashcans on Fourth Avenue between 68th Street and Ovington Avenue. The idea was that since the trashcans had become magnets for illegal household garbage, removing them would help keep streets clean.
CB10 District Manager Josephine Beckmann says that the litter began after the Department of Sanitation reduced the number of trashcan pickups in the neighborhood from as many as twice a day to currently just four times a week, due to budget cuts.
Illegal dumping in the cans of household and commercial trash by some residents and businesses, combined with the reduced pickups, led to unsightly street corners, especially on weekends. Overflowing trash blew on to streets, attracting rats and other vermin.
CB10 Chairperson Joanne Seminara says that since the Department of Sanitation couldn’t carry out more pickups, the community board decided to go with the recommendation of its environmental committee to test if removing all 14 trashcans in the area could curb the trash problem.
“We did it out of a sense of desperation,” she admits. “We didn’t know what else to do.”
The experiment appeared to be successful after the first several weeks, Seminara says. It was then that State Senator Marty Golden, in direct opposition to the CB10 decision, made a request to the Department of Sanitation to bring the trashcans back.
In June, two trashcans were returned to 69th Street and Fourth Avenue Golden says he was opposed to the community board’s experiment, and felt that basic sanitation was needed on busy street corners.
“The trashcans are a service provided by the city to keep the city clean. We shouldn’t take those services away, because then we will never get those services back again,” Golden says.
Golden claims that the area is cleaner now than when the cans were not there. The new cans also have narrower openings designed to make it more difficult for residents to clog the cans with illegal garbage.
When asked if his actions in getting the trashcans back have been received kindly by the community, Golden says, “I get that all the time. People come up to me and say thank you.”
Golden also says that although the Department of Sanitation has been tightening its budget, he has nonetheless asked it to issue summons to anyone who dumps illegal waste into the trashcans.
Residents along Fourth Avenue, however, are divided over how best to clean up their neighborhood. John Stathopoulos, who works at Yianni’s restaurant between 68th and 69th streets, says that the absence of trashcans seems to have kept the streets cleaner, but it is still not an ideal solution for residents.
“It is cleaner now, maybe, yes,” Stathopoulos says, hesitatingly. “But now, people have no place to throw their litter. People may now just throw it on the streets. I have kept one of my own wastebaskets outside, near the bus stop, to help people out. I am doing what the city should be doing!”
Felicity Chu, who works at the Bay Ridge Discount Liquors shop, opposes the current limited number of trashcans. Her shop is only a few steps from one of the new trashcans at 69th Street, but she still feels that street litter has gone up.
“People just leave their trash here and there. On top of the mailboxes, inside the telephone booths, on top of our cycles outside—things were a lot cleaner when there were trashcans at every corner,” Chu says.
Art Surdam, of 72nd Street and Fourth Avenue, says that he isn’t convinced that the board experiment has been effective. “The problem here was that the city was not having as many garbage pickups here as before,” he says. “I’m not really sure if removing the trashcans is going to help solve that issue.”
On the other hand, at the Subway restaurant on the corner of 68th, Greg, who declined to give his last name, is vehement in opposing any move to bring back the trashcans. “It was filthy here,” he says. “It is good that they removed the trashcans—now garbage won’t get dumped here. I used to get fined, and I had to clean up the mess. They definitely should not bring those cans back.”
Beckmann says that for now, there will be only two trashcans along the blocks in Fourth Avenue, but the number could change in the future.
Beckmann says that the trash problem is not specific to Fourth Avenue. She cites examples of piles of garbage being seen in Bay Ridge’s business improvement districts, as well as reports from Seventh Ave. in Park Slope, where some of the elected officials are not renewing contracts to have extra pickups.
“The city is going to have to look at this,” she says. “If we are reducing the number of pickups and if we don’t have enforcement to prevent illegal dumping, then this is going to be a city-wide problem, and that is what we are beginning to see. I think we may have been one of the first to initiate this discussion, but certainly, it’s a discussion that’s going to continue city wide.”
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