Latest / Stuff You Should Know / NYC Trash: A study in persistence

Transcript

NYC Trash: A study in persistence · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, do you live in Washington, DC? Are you
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: sitting around fretting about this upcoming election? Maybe you're even
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: working on one of these campaigns. Well, we've got a
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: great stress reliever for you, and that's coming out to
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: see us on May thirtieth at the Warner Theater for
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know Live.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we guarantee zero political jokes, one percent zero political
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: jokes if you come out and see us. We're gonna
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: be in Medford, mass on May twenty ninth. The next night,
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: we'll be in DC on May thirtieth, and then the
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: night after that we'll be at our old friend, the
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Town Hall in Manhattan Town, NYC.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: That's right, So check out tickets. You can go to
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: stuff youshould Know dot com, you can go to the
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: theater websites themselves, avoid those secondary ticket brokers, or check
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: out our link tree, right Josh.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, link tree sysk Lot.
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: You and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and it's just the three
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: of us, Oscar the Grouch in it here on Stuff
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: you Should Know.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think this I think there may be one
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: more in this sort of semi suite that we've been
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: tackling over the years, which is to say, the the
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: operations of New York City.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: It's fascinating stuff.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: I love it because every time I'm there, I'm like, yeah,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: how do they deal with all this trash and deliver
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: all that mail? So if mail is interesting enough, well,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna do a little research and see if New
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: York City mail is worth its own deal.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Okay, we did one on the USPS before.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Oh, sure, that was as done stuff on landfills and
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: all kinds of things. But New York City is very
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: specific to its own self.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, as they say, living it up between the Moon
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: and New York City. I can't remember the rest living
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: it up.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and then he says, no, I like, it's if
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: you get caught, But I like, I like.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Living it up better too. All Right, so we're talking
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: New York City trash, Chuck. I didn't ever really give
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: much thought to it. I've been in New York plenty
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: of times and have been like, wow, there's a lot
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: of trash everywhere all the time, some of it in bags,
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: some of it on the street, some of it in
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: overflowing trash containers. But it turns out that it is
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: an enormous issue and has been an ongoing and very
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: long standing issue in New York. And they now have
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: a mayor and a sanitation commissioner who's like, enough, it's done.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: We're cleaning the city up once and for all. And
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: what's yeah, Eric Adams, he's got a whole like, his
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: whole campaign is called get Stuff Done, and the the
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: trash branch of that is get Stuff Clean. And just Katish,
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: the new garbage commissioner is from one of the wealthiest
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: families in America, possibly the world. Oh wow, who's decided
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: to dedicate her career to civil service, specifically in New York.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: So she's worked in a few agencies and now she's
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: the head of the Sanitation Department the dsn Y and
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: is basically just like steamrolling through with new changes and
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: just being like, oh, I don't care. That's the way
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: you used to do it. Apparently it's wrong because it
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: didn't get it done. We're doing it this way now.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: So they're actually making huge enormous changes by leaps and
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: bounds that seem like they actually possibly could clean New
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: York up in the next couple of years.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Do you know what how the Tish family, what their deal.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Is, what the what their deal is like, how they
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: communicate Thanksgiving?
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Well name, he said, one of the wealthiest families in
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: the world.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: I was kind of curious, Oh, I get what you mean.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: So what from or whatever?
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: Her father is the CEO of like the Loew's theaters,
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: the Loewe's hotels. Apparently they own a distilling brand like
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: the parent companies, the CEO of the parent company. But
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: I have a feeling like her family is like legacy wealthy.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: That's my impression.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, New York NYU has the Tish School of Arts,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: but I'm sure it's the same family.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Yes it is. As a matter of fact, there's a
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: really interesting profile on her and the New York Sanitation
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Department in the New Yorker of all places, and they
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: rattled off like three different things that are named after
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: her family. So, yes, they've been around for a while.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: But apparently it's pretty cool. She's like, I'm incredibly wealthy,
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: but I'm going to go, you know, work my way
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: up in New York bureaucracy.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: You know, it's really pretty incredible. So should we go
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: back in time.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's yeah.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: We've talked before about what old New York was like,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: and when you see movies about old New York, they
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: you know, they might grunge it up a little bit,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: like Scorsese's Gangs of New York probably did one of
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: the closest, truest depictions of early New York and just
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: kind of how disgusting it could be. And we've talked
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: about the amounts of manure from horses on the sides
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: of the street, but it was really really gross. New
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: York was a disgusting place back in the day. They
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: did have a law, and this show's kind of got it,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: has kind of got it all. It's got like amazing
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: facts of the episode. Right off the bat. We have
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: a great album title, which was this law from the
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: sixteen fifties that banned tubs of odor and nastiness. If
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: that's not like a stooge's album title or something, I
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: don't know what is, but it was gross. I think
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: the first fact of the podcast for me is that
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: about twenty percent of Manhattan, or really the whole metro
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: area is built on land that didn't used to be there.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: It's literally land that came from garbage, bill from construction debris,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: dirt from the subway project. Like Lower Manhattan in particular,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: just kept growing and expanding in size. And here's another
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: fun fact on that Ellis Island is twenty eight acres
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: now it started out as three acres. Oh wow, It's
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: was literally built from I guess just waste.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because I mean, if you think about it, if
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: you just go dump one load off of an island,
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: you you've just littered. But if you keep doing it,
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: you're developing the land.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: It becomes art.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's got to stick with it, and eventually it
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: becomes an okay thing. Right.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, It's really pretty incredible to think about that when
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: there are overlays that show, like, you know, how Manhattan,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Lower Manhattan grew just from dumping stone.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh, but there's pretty cool maps like that.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: I love that kind of stuff too, Like I love
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: walk looking around and being like, what was this building originally?
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: You know what used to be here? I asked that
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: out loud.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: Sometimes, right, just the building never answers that.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: No. So this is not the first time, under Eric
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: Adams and Jessica Tish that a New York administrator has
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: tried to clean the city up. Plenty have tried, but
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: the last truly successful one was in the century before
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: last a Civil War. I think colonel a Union colonel
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: named George Waring who became the head of the Department
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: of Street Cleaning, which is what the sanitation department was
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: called back then, and he cleaned up the city starting
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: around eighteen ninety five. But he was not the first
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: head of the Department of Street Cleaning. That department was
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: almost twenty years old by the time he came along.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: But it had just basically been a place where Tammany
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Hall and the political machine gave jobs to supporters, political supporters,
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: and it was like, you don't need to show up
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: to work, You're still going to get a paycheck kind
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: of thing.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, they either did that or they outright
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: just stole money that was allocated for those cleaning up
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: projects to begin with. I saw a name back then
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds that the sledge of just manure
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: and garbage and cess sess a thing.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: I guess cess is the best.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Pol I know it says pools that they is sess
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: the thing in the pool.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: I would think so, all right, anyway.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: They called the sledge that lined the streets corporate pudding
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: no gross, because I guess it was just you know,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: it wasn't getting cleaned up because all that money, like
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: I said, was either stolen or reallocated and to cronies.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: There's someone named Robin Nagel who's an NYU professor who
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: it's an unpaid position but has basically worked as the
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: unsanctioned unsalary anthropologists from for the Sanitation Department of New
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: York and just has an incredible amount of knowledge about
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: the stuff.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we've talked about Robin Nagel before, and George Waring
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: and the changes he made so supposedly you can look
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: at Harper's Magazine between eighteen ninety three and eighteen ninety five,
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: and it's like it's like George Waring came along and
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: waived a magic wand like the difference is so distinct.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: Like he created kind of like a military type institution hierarchy.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: He outfitted as people with white outfits designed by John
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Paul Gautier and pith helmets, and they went around and
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: they cleaned up New York. And apparently they throw parades
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: for him once in a while because they were just
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: so successful and loved and revered because they did such
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: a good job. But you can see the difference between
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: these photos and Harper's Weekly that Robin Nagel had. And
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: I think we talked about all this in the Typhoid
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Mary episode. I think it was in the beginning.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Of that one, that makes sense.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure that's where it was.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I imagine George Wern came in on day one.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: It was like, for starters, how about you get that
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: dead hog off the side of the road.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: Somebody's like, she did it.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: He was famous, by the way for designing the Memphis
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: sewage system after the Civil War. Before New York. They're like, hey,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: he did such a good job, you know, working out
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: the or sewage. I guess in Memphis. Come on to
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: New York because we have sewage in the streets.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Nice. He worked his way up. Yeah, if you could
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: make it in New York sanitation, you can make it
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: anywhere with sanitation, believe me.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: So as things were going, they had landfills that came along, obviously,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: but a lot of the trash was handled by incinerators.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Still is just great controversy, as we'll get to later,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: but a lot of these smaller apartment buildings had their
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: own incinerators. They would just burn their trash. The city
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: was like, this is an air quality nightmare, imagine, So
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: let's ban these things. And I thought it said eighteen
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: eighty nine, but they were banned finally in nineteen eighty nine.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that tracks. I mean, it wasn't until the nineties
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: that New York really started to kind of turn around some.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: No, that's true.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: So one of the other things they did, aside from
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: banning individual buildings having incinerators, which just seems like madness
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: in retrospect, you know what I mean, kind of does. Yeah,
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: they also started slowly shutting down the landfills that were
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: within the city limits, and finally the last one, Fresh
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Kills on Staten Island, was famously shut down in two
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: thousand and one, and the one of the reasons it
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: became famous is it was the landfill that accepted a
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: lot of the waste from the Twin Towers after the
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: World Trade Center attacks, and that was it. It's kind
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: of like kind of fitting, you know what I mean,
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: in a really weird, bittersweet, poetic way.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like a turning of the page, I guess.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, but that was it. So the thing is
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: is New York still has tons of trash that they
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: accumulate every day. I mean, just as we'll see a
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: mind boggling amount of trash is generated by New York
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: every day and they have trouble getting it off the street.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: But then also they're starting to find like we are
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: having problems identifying where to send this trash.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So getting back to wearing, back then,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: he was like, all right, we gotta we got to
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: figure out a way to get this trash. Like people
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: just throw it in the street, and Wearing is like
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: that that's not a good system. I don't know if
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: anyone's noticed, but just throwing your trash out of your
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: literally out of your windows sometimes of your apartment isn't
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: the way to go about things if we want to
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: live a healthy life as a city. And so so
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: why don't we get trash cans? You mentioned Oscar the Grouch.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: They were just sort of the standard metal Oscar the
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Grouch cans for a long long time until nineteen sixty
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: eight when there was a sanitation strike that was only
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: nine days long. But it doesn't take long for a
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: sanitation strike to really I guess, get a little steam
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: not New York, a little steam going, because there were
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: one hundred thousand tons of garbage on the city streets
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: by the end of that nine days, and it was
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: just a mess. So they said, all right, how about this.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: These trash cans were working for a long time, but
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: you're just dumping your trash right in these cans. Why
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: don't you put it in trash bags inside the can,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: And very sweetly, they thought that that might help the
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: rat situation, like contain the smell enough where rats wouldn't
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: get to it, which is kind of cooky to think about. Course, rats,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: we'll get to trash anywhere. And it was better than
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: you know, lifting up these heavy trash cans, because they
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: could just pick the bags out of the trash cans
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: and throw them in. And then finally, just a few
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: years later in seventy one, they said, let's just get
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: rid of these cans and just put it in bags
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: and put it out on the sidewalk.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one of the greatest, most important cities in
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: the world. Just leave our trash laying around in bags
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: for hours on end, multiple times a week, every week.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: Let's do that instead, because you can stick them anywhere.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: They'll fit anywhere. Yeah, and that's one of the challenges
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: that New York has is it lacks a lot of
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: the alleys and a lot of the little side well
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: alleys I think is good enough to where people in
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: other cities store trash cans and trash bins like seeing people.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: So instead they have to use these trash bags and
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: basically tuck them wherever they can kind of out of
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: the way, and very frequently not out of the way.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: You have to walk around them on the sidewalk pretty
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: often too. So that is that's the state of New
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: York trash collection.
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: Now.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: People leave their trash out and bags on the sidewalk.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: The sanitation department workers come along and pick up the
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: bags and throw them in the trash manually, throw them
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: in the garbage trucks manually. And this is staggeringly behind
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: the times, Like garbage technology has advanced by leaps and
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: bounds since then, in New York just because of some
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: of its unique characteristics and traits, has had a really
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: hard time implementing them like other cities have.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, but like you said, there's good news on
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: the horizon. You want to take a break now, yeah,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: all right, we'll take a break, good little setup, and
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: we'll come back and talk about just how much trash
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: there is right after this. All right, so we promised
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: talk of just how much trash New Yorkers produce. I
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: don't think, like per person, they're creating an exceptional amount
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: of trash. Not picking on New Yorkers. Sure, there's just
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: a lot of people there, eight hundred thousand, more than
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: eight hundred thousand residential apartment buildings, and they produce about
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: four and a half million tons of just residential trash
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: every year, So twenty four million pounds a day, or
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: about twelve thousand tons per day of just residential people
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: trash from apartments.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so every day they generate an equivalent weight of
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: trash to fifty million, five hundred and twenty six thousand,
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: three hundred and sixteen big macs.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: I knew something like that was coming.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: That's a lot of big max. Imagine all of that
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: being produced every day.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Is that netweight after cooking?
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Sorry, that's yes, that's the completed weight. That's what you
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: get when they put it on the tray.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, gotcha.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: And what's interesting is eating either one has about the
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: same impact on your health. Uh, that's good, thank you.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: It's mourning for us, which is unusual. So I'm a
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: little slower, yeah, and a little little less giving with
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: my laugh count.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: As long as I'm getting a little bit of it,
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: A little bit goes a long way.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: You've had plenty. You got me right off the bat
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: there with the what was that first.
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: Joke that really got me the Oscar the grouch one?
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: No, that was okay though, Oh.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: The mistaken living it up in New York City.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that got me going right off the bat.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: So you would not be surprised to learn, h dear
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: listener that the ds n Y, which is the New
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: York City's sanitation department, is the largest in the country.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: One reason is obviously because there are so many people
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: in so much trash, but also New York is a
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: little bit unique among large cities and that they are
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: responsible or more trash than other large cities are.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah right, Yeah, a lot of other cities. They still
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: handle some like maybe houses or something on the outskirts
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: of town or in neighborhoods, but you know, the apartment
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: buildings and commercial stuff, all that's handled by private companies.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: And then in other cities, that's all private companies these
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: days in some cases too, especially suburbs. But yeah, with
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: New York, they're like, nope, we're going to handle it.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: If you're a resident, we're going to take care of your.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Trash, that's right. And as we'll see they on the
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: private side, they handle the commercial trash that's coming up shortly,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: but as far as the residential stuff goes, they collect
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: from each residential building two or three times a week.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: There are fifty nine different districts that cover New York,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: each having its own garage that house more than two
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: thousand collection trucks over those fifty nine districts.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's just the collection trucks. They have other
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: kinds of trucks too.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw that. I was trying to find out
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: about maintenance of these things. But collectively, the just the
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: garbage trucks of New York drive about four and a
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: half million miles a year.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: That's crazy.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a lot of miles.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: So yeah, they have all sorts of different trucks. This
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: is where the part of me who was once a
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: little boy who loved looking at picture books of like
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Caterpillar earth movers and those giant Volvo dump trucks really
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: kind of came back to the surface. But they've got
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: some dual bin models and if you look at them,
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: they basically do what it says on the tin. There's
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: half divided into half for trash and the other half
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: for a recycling so you can pick up both on
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: the same day at the same time. Yeah, they have
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: top loaders that you know, go up to like a
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: dumpster and just pick it up and shake it like
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: an enemy you might on the street who weighed much
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: less than you, all right, And then they also have
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: just the regular kind that are called the white elephants,
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: and those are just so incredibly massive. Each of the
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: New York City regular single bin garbage trucks can hold
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: twelve tons of waste.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: That's incredible.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: A full size American standard school bus weighs fourteen tons,
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: so they fit almost a school bus weight of trash
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: in just one single truck at a time.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: How many big backs is it?
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: I didn't do that one.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: Okay. This is the other fact of the podcast for
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: me is that every garbage truck in New York has
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: two sets of steering wheels and pedals on both sides,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: So either person can drive and no matter who's driving,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: each brake pedal is live. So if someone doesn't see
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: somebody and the person that's not driving see someone, you know,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: dart in front of the garbage truck, they can hit
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: the brakes as well.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: Yep, it's a good idea. They also have street sweepers
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: aka mechanical brooms, and I should say I've seen those
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: are starting to be rolled out in electric versions, but
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: apparently they're trying to slowly electrify their entire fleet. It
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: seems like street sweepers were one of the first to
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: be electrified. Salt spreaders, snowplows, front end loaders, basically everything
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: you could possibly need to clean up and clear trash.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: The New York City Department of Sanitation has.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: It, yeah, for sure. And if you're like, well, why
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: do they have snowplows and all that kind of stuff,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: is because besides trash and recycling and composting, which there
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: is sort of a newer program, and it came about
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: because it's a big problem. I think about twenty percent
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: of New York City's garbage's food waste. Man, they can
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: really really cut down on that with a good composting system.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: In the city, but they're working on that. We'll get
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: to that later. But they have to clean vacant lots.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: They're the ones who remove the snow. Here's another fun fact.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: If there's a car on the street that has the
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: license plates torn off of it and someone has just
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: dumped it and it's worth under twelve hundred and fifty dollars,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: the police say, that's a garbage car. It's not our responsibility,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: so it's the DSNY has to take care of it.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So I looked up a little bit on that
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: and I couldn't find how they make that assessment of
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: how much the thing is.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: Worth Kelly Bluebook.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: I guess I would think just by virtue of having
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: the license plate removed and it being abandoned on the
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: street would indicate that it was worth less than twelve
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: hundred and fifty dollars.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: You know, usually the fifty dollars is what kills me,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: like that's where they landed instead of just twelve or
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: thirteen hundred. Yeah, hey, I guess it was a formula.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: Similarly, they also clean up abandoned bikes that are like
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: chained to public property if the bike can just no
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: longer be ridden because it's so bent or it's missing
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: some essential parts, they will take care of it. They'll
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: clip that chain and throw the whole thing away. But
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: if you have a bike that you want to get
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: rid of, you don't have to abandon it in New
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: York City. You can take the wheels off, put them
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: in with your trash, and then you can put the
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: bike itself out with your recycling.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: Oh very nice.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought so too.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: And as if that wasn't enough last year in twenty
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: twenty three, Eric Adams, the mayor, said all right, you
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: also now have to regulate and enforce street vendors. You
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: got to clean up the highways and take care of
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: the graffiti in New York. And I'm sure they were like, great,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: it's not like we didn't have enough to do already.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: Well, what's interesting is that's creating a lot of grumbling
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: because there's a lot of jobs from other agencies that
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: are just being taken.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sure.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: And the justification is like, hey, you're doing other stuff.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: You have other stuff to focus on, so this part
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: has become kind of low priority. So it makes sense
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: the Department of Sanitation would clean up graffiti. We're cleaning
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: up the whole city. And apparently there was a backlog
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: of one thousand requests for graffiti removal. They cleared eight
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: hundred of them in one month. So they're doing work there.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: That's awesome. I mean, I like good graffiti, like graffiti art.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, So if you're a resident of New York, you
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: put in a request for graffiti removal. You can also
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: request that graffiti be left alone. And there's like this
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: whole procedure and process, but they give you like a
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: certain amount of time between the time you say I
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: want this graffiti removed and then the time they come out,
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: I guess, to give you a chance to really think
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: about whether you want it removed or not, and then
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: they'll remove it.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like do you want the vulgar tag just spray
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: painted across the front of a business removed? Or is
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: it art?
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Exactly depends on who did it.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: I guess. So eight thousand sanitation workers total, two thousand
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: other employees well eight yeah, so I guess that's ten
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: thousands total, but eight thousand actual, you know, sort of.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: You know, bag slingers and cleaner uppers. They're known as
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: New York's Strong. They are ninety percent mail, right, now,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: so props to that ninety percent, and really props to
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: that ten percent of these ladies that are getting in
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: there and getting their hands dirty, because it is tough, tough,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: dangerous work.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: Yes. So one of the things, one of the reasons
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: that it's particularly dangerous for sanitation workers in New York
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: is again because they use bags. They're not in cans.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: If you've not been to New York, just imagine bags
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: of trash just piled everywhere. The problem is when they're
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: grabbing them and throwing them in the truck, they're probably
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: trying to avoid garbage juice, which is a very distracting thing.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: It's very gross. It's rarely harmful, but you don't want
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: it on you, but it can distract you from things
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: that can harm you, like some rusty, sharp thing poking
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: out of the bag that you put your hand on.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of hazards. Sometimes the stuff that's in
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: there could pose a hazard to you in other ways,
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: like garbage juice. There's an article I found from nineteen
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: ninety six where sanitation worker named Michael Hanley died because
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: some jerk threw hydrofluoric acid away in with the regular
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: garbage and when it was compressed in the hopper, it
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: exploded and Hanley inhaled it and died basically on the spot.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's the thing that happens when that hopper,
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: you know, squishes all that stuff down, there's gonna be
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: stuff that sprays out. They you know, try to get
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: out of the way, but sometimes they can't. And Olivia
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: found this another fun little factoid here that apparently enough
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: of that garbage juice is coffee related that whatever season
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: it is, if it's like pumpkin, spiceason and whatever, the
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: sanitation workers just like it's like, oh God, here comes
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: the pumpkin this you know, this fall.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I can imagine that just gets really old, really fast,
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: you imagine, Yeah, because it's the worst version of that coffee.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: It's not hot and fresh and in the it's cold
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: and runny and mixed with other stuff and leaking out
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: of a garbage bag.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Like hydrofluoric acid.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: So there's also it's also just hard, Like a lot
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: of this stuff is very heavy. You can fit a
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: lot of stuff into a trash bag, and apparently residential
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: places with compactors use what are called sausage bags where
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: you can fit multiple compacted rounds of trash into one
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: single bag. You need two people to toss those in,
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: and then the cans. They're also in charge of the cans,
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: right Like I think those little very famous kind of
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: mesh wire New York City trash cans that open like
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: a door, I think at the base. Yeah, am I
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: making sense here?
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Sort of just streak winner trash cans.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: Let's just call them that.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Those weigh thirty pounds empty. So I've never seen a
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: New York City trash can that wasn't absolutely overflowing. So
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: that's a lot more weight, and they're doing that by hand.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Some of these routes can have as many a four
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: hundred of yay.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: So that's so crazy.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: I just really really really hard strenuous labor.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: You also, so you said that there's never a New
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: York City corner of trash can that is empty. So
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: I found a study from nineteen eighty seven that estimated
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: that a sixty pound can so a trash can with
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: about thirty pounds of waste. You can imagine that's probably
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: pretty average. To lift it the forty inches into the
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: hopper and dump it requires three and a half horse
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: power from the sanitation worker, and then, like you said,
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: there might be four hundred of those on a route.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: I just can't imagine how just tired you would be
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: at the end of.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: This well and all this stuff you're breathing in too,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: especially if you're a street sweeper. All kinds of you know,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: sort of respiratory issues can pop up before COVID, you know,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: before people are like, hey, maybe we should wear masks
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: and sanitize things. Thousands of New York City workers got
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: sick during the early COVID days. Nine of them died.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: About one hundred sanitation workers died from illnesses cleaning up
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: Ground zero. So it is a you know, not only
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: is it a strenuous job and can be dangerous because
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: of you know, sharp and rusty things, but it's just
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: it's just hard on your body period. Right.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: Fortunately they have a really good union. They're are members
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: of Teamster's Local eight thirty one, the Uniform Sanitation Men's Association,
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: and thanks to the union, they when you are an
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: entry level sanitation worker, you start out making forty three thousand,
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: three hundred and five dollars a year, not great, which
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: is no especially in New York. It's hard to live
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: on that but if you stick with it for five
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: and a half years, it more than doubles to eighty
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: eighty nine hundred and seventy nine.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: That's pretty great.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And once you reach that point, there are plenty
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: of New York City sanitation workers that are making one
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars or over from all of the extra
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: pay that can come from bonus work, like they get
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: triple overtime for snow removal and stuff like that. So
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: you can make a pretty good middle class income for
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: New York City as a sanitation worker just from sticking
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: with it for a few years. Plus Also, you can
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: retire in just over twenty years too, with full benefits.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's that's a big deal. You get
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: about eighteen days of vacation. But if you start in
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: your early twenties, you put in your twenty two years.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: They don't have like an age thing where like you
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: have to work to a certain age. So if you
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: start in your early twenties, you could potentially retire with
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: your full pension in your early to mid forties. And
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: you know, you could do a lot worse than.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: That for sure, Yeah, because I mean you just you
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: can be like, well, I want to keep working, but
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: I'll go over here and take this other job, but
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: I'll still get paid for my old job because I retired.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Exactly. You do have to pass a civil service exam.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: You have to get your CDL, your commercial driver's license.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: There's about a month of training and then you have
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: to you know, once you get that license. They have
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: a little practice area where they practice, like a little
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: obstacle course basically to you practice driving that garbage truck,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: because you know, driving the New York is I find
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: it enjoyable and kind of fun and exciting, but driving
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: a garbage truck, imagine, is tough. There's stuff all over
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: the place and you can't just mad max it through there,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: you know, No.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: You can't because people get killed like that. Because there's
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: a lot of people walking and running and riding bikes
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: around New York that you have to look out for.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, increasingly distracted people, we should.
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: Add, right.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So we said that they shut down all of
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: the landfills within New York's borders, but that means that
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: they have to ship this trash one way or another
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: outside of New York. Some of it gets diverted to incinerators.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: They're like we don't want incinerators in New York because
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: it contributes to poor air quality, but we'll pay you
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: to burn it for us elsewhere. Fortunately, they've now converted
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: some of those incinerators to waste to energy plants, so
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: you're actually getting something out of burning the trash.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: As far as these waste of energy plants go. If
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: you're thinking, like, what do you mean they burn trash
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: and get something out of it, it's it basically works
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: just like coal would like any kind of energy creation
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: like that is just burning something to create steam to
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: spend that, you know, to boil water to create steam
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: to spin that turbine. And in this case, they just
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: burn trash instead of coal, right, which you think is like,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: oh that's great. You know, we may maybe this should
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: be a whole episode at one point, but there there
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: are a lot of people say like, these are an
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: environmental nightmare. You are creating energy, but you're also creating
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: a landfill in the sky by what you're putting into
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: the air, So we might want to look into that
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: as a full one at some point.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: Remember we did our plasma waste generator episode, and that
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: thing was flawless in its design and execution, But I
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: don't think that's what they're using for these waste to
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: energy plants. I don't think so. So some of the
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: garbage just be diverted and incinerated, But from what I understand,
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: the vast majority is sent outside of New York to
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: landfills in places like Virginia or South Carolina or Ohio.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: And the way that they get there predominantly is by
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: rail and by barge. And so New York set up
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: five what are called marine transfer stations that are amazing
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: if you look into Did you look into them at all,
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: because they're crazy awesome?
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: I did, and they are crazy awesome. Yeah, those marine stations.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: I think they built those that were about a twenty
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: year period starting in the early two thousands. There's five
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: of them. The neighborhoods you know where these were going
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: to be near, were obviously not too excited about them
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: when you know when they were first proposed. But apparently
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: they've done a pretty good job. As far as the
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: smell goes, They aren't too stinky. I think it's noise
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: more than anything, because you're you constantly just have trucks
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: going in and out of there, right, But they've done
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: a great job with deodorizing and venting this stuff. Even
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: have hawk calls being played on loudspeakers to keep seagulls
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: away because that would be a nightmare. Oh yeah, but
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: apparently they're not as bad as everyone thought they were
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: gonna be.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: No plus, Also, the neighborhoods that they're in are like
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: already kind of ports, and there's other industry nearby anyway,
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: And they set up essentially access roads so that when
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: the trucks start backing up, they're not on the street,
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: they're off of the street. And then the whole thing
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: is enclosed, right, So garbage truck goes into the building,
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: sealed shipping container comes out the other side, and inside
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: the building. Like you said, they've taken all these measures
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: to keep the smell down and just keep it from
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: being gross. But what happens is a garbage truck comes in,
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: backs up to the tipping station, tips its contents all
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: the way down to the next story down. Next story
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: down is just basically like that trash compactor in Star Wars,
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: the first one. It's essentially like that, but rather than
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: having like that pneumatic arm crush everything, they have front
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: loaders that basically push all the stuff into shipping containers,
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: and a shipping container can hold just over about two
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: full trucks worth of waste I think twenty five tons.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: They top that thing off, seal it and say here
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: you go, waste management take over from here.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know you mentioned some of this goes
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: to different states. I saw that almost all of Manhattan's
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: trash goes to New Jersey. Oh nice, sorry, New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: and Ohio is where most of the rest of it goes,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: as far as landfills go. And then weirdly, Staten Island
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: trash goes to South Carolina.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: That is a little weird.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know why, but I guess they just, you know,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: worked out an exchange program or something.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I guess it's totally up to private companies.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: Like I said, waste management's a good example of taking
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: possession of the shipping containers, stacking them up on barges.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: I think you can fit like forty eight full on
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: a barge and taking an on a slow boat to
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: South Carolina, or taking it upriver to Niagara Falls. I
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: think that's where one of the incinerators is. Niagara, New
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: York yeah. And then also if it's somewhere like Ohio,
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: it's very tough to sail a barge to Ohio, so
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: you just take it to a rail station and the
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: shipping containers get shipped by rail to Ohio where it
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: gets dumped.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: All right, maybe all actually right, before we take a break,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: let's cover this one more thing I think, which is
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: if you've lost something and you want to get it
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: back in the trash, it's probably not going to happen,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: but it really depends on how good of a looker
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: you are, because what you'll do is is you'll call
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: up You'll say I lost a wedding ring in the garbage.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty upset about this, and they say, oh great,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: we have a program called the Lost Valuable Search. Just
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: come on down to the Marine transfer station. We'll work
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: with you to determine which truck is yours. And then
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: there's a huge pile of trash and you have ninety
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: minutes to go through and find it by yourself, and
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: or I guess, with whatever friends you are able to
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: talk into coming with you.
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: And people have they found all sorts of stuff.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: Sure it happens, Yeah.
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: It does happen. Apparently, Also there's people who are like, oh,
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: that's what I have to do. Just forget about it.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: I'm good. Thanks anyway, Yeah, I'll get a new wedding ring.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: So let's take a break and we'll come back and
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: talk about some of the shady business that goes on
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: in the private industry.
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: All right, cool, okay, Chuck.
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: So we said that the city picks up residential trash,
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: but for the most part, commercial trash like stores, office
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: buildings industry that's handled by private companies. And that's not
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: actually new. That goes all the way back to I
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: think the mid to late fifties, nineteen fifty seven, I
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: think when the city was like, hey, we could use
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: some help collecting trash. How about private companies get involved?
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: And the mafia sat up and said, yes, let's do that.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: And apparently the Gambino and Genovese crime families were really
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: big into what's called karting. It's private trash collection. Yeah,
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: for decades it was extraordinarily corrupt, and finally in the nineties,
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: New York did something about it, got the crime families
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: out of the karting business. But the companies are like
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: no less shady than they were before, and they're just
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: shady in different ways. Whereas before they were screwing over
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: the customers, now they're screwing over the workers. Because back then,
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: at least they had they were mob run, but they
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: were in really good unions. And as these private companies
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: came along, they don't have very good unions. So I
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: saw somewhere that a worker at a private company today
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: makes less as a driver for a truck than a
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: helper made in nineteen eighty five. Wow, sixteen dollars an hour.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: They make less than that nineteen eighty five to twenty sixteen.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: Isn't that crazy? Yeah, that's what happens when you have
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: a union that's good, that goes away in favor of
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: union that's bad and that's in cahoots with the ownership,
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: or if there is no union at all, which is
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: in case some true wouldn't.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: Tony Soprano win sanitation?
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: Or didn't he say he was, yes, he was in karting?
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I remember that. I also remember when I
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: lived in New Jersey, the Italian. I'm not saying it
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: was a mafia truck because that would be wrong to
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: as but whoever picked up our trash had a big
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: Italian name on the side of the truck. And it
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: was during that time of the Sopranos where I was
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: kind of like, what's going on here?
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: Oh, you know, what's going on there? But supposedly that
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: was after they cleaned things up, although that was Jersey huh,
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: So yeah, they probably didn't. That was probably mafia run well.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: And it was also mid nineties, so I think they
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: were just like, that's when they were cleaning it up.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: Gotcha.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: So there are about two hundred and fifty private handlers
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: that are now overseen by the Business Integrity Commission, which
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: may as well be called the Don't let the Mafia
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: get Involved Commission And sometimes yeah, except exactly so you mentioned,
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: you know, just bad conditions in some of these private companies,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: like very long work hours, maybe safety training maybe not,
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: maybe safety gear maybe not there. If you hear of
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: a story about a pedestrian that's killed in New York
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: by a garbage truck, chances are it's a private company.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: Not always, but they're much much higher incidents of I
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: didn't say incidences. Somebody called us out on that.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: You remember that, Yeah, Yeah, it's what we're really progressing
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: here in year sixteen.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: Hey, we're trying to, but many more incidents from the
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: private companies, you know, running over somebody than the DSNY,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: and largely because of training, but also because they're just
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: they're working too long, they're too tired, and they have
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: too much to do in general.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, an investigative journalist named Kiara Feldman wrote an article
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: for Pro Public called Trashed, and I don't remember what
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: came after the colon, but it is. It's really eye opening.
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, even if you don't care about trash collection
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: or New York City, just the fact that people are
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: being treated this way is just nuts. Man. So it's
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: definitely worth a read if this episode piqued your interest
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: at all.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's an African immigrant name uk Diallo. And I
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: don't think we mentioned that some of these private companies
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: will just like, you know, pick up the dude in
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: the parking lot that's looking for day work. So they're
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: not covered at all or insured or anything like that.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: They'll just like, we'll pay you under the table to
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: like run out in front of the truck and get
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: bags out, you know, to where they can be collected easier.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: And Muktar was one of these guys, and he was
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: crushed under a truck. And when it came time to
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: talk about this, the company said this, we do know
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: this guy. He just is a homeless guy that ran
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: out in front of the truck. And of course it
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: later came out what really happened. So in twenty nineteen,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: a New York passed a law that said, all right,
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: we're dividing this into zones. Now there can be no
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: more than three companies picking up in each zone, just
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: trying to sort of rein in the chaos a little bit.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: And you have to if you want to do this,
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: you have to sign a contract that meets certain standards
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: of safety and working conditions. And it's you know, it's
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: kind of being implemented now, so it is still currently
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: changing for the better.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you mentioned all the miles that the DSNY
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: travels just on their routes every year, these commercial haulers
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: might be driving from what you know, one one spot
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: to many many blocks over to the next spot. Yeah,
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: and just wasting so much time and burning so much gas.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: Whereas if it's like there's only three companies in this
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: one quadrant, they're going to be driving a lot around
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: a lot less. And they're also going to be burning
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: a lot more, a lot fewer fossil fuels and releasing
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: fewer emissions too, So it's all together a pretty good plan.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: Of course, the companies are like, can't do that, Like
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: what about competition? But New York's not really listening apparently,
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: And that's what's happening right now. And that's just part
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: of another again, this larger push for reforming the whole
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: place under Eric Adams and Jessica Tish, and one of
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: the big ones is getting rid of the black bags
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: in favor of container like the same plastic bins that
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: you see in basically every other city in the world
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: in one way, shape or form or another. New York's
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: finally being like, we're going to get in on that.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: Are they black backs? I think they were blue?
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: There's blue too, Okay, yeah, they have all different colors,
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: but there's definitely blue as well.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: Yes, okay, how was it? Sure? It's been a while,
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: but I just have a visual in my head of
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: like mountains of blue bags on trash Day. And if
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: you've never been to New York at all, or you
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: haven't been many times, you would probably be shocked to
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: come out on trash Day on a hot summer, rainy
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: trash day, because it's quite a sight and quite a smell.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: But like you said, they're moving toward bins in just
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: a few months ago. In February of this year, they said,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: all right, here's our new plan we're going to get.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: If you've got a smaller apartment building, you're going to
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: have those little wheelie bins. Like almost every other city
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: in the United States, if you are in a really
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: big apartment building, it's basically a dumpster, but it's plastic,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: but it's like a large container. You mentioned the fact
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: that there aren't a lot of alleys in New York.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: It's kind of a movie trope when you've seen alley
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: scenes set in New York City, probably not being filmed
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: in New York because most of the buildings on a
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: block are just you know, crammed you right next to
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: each other. So these dumpsters have to go somewhere. And
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: they said, all right, we'll make them small enough to
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: fit in a parking spot. We'll lose one hundred and
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: fifty thousand parking spots all over the city, but we
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: have to do it, and it'll also help us reclaim
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: some of this sidewalk space that we're losing.
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and apparently parking spots is one of the most
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: politically charged issues in all of New York politics.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: I'm sure.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: So that's really gutsy to be like one hundred and
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: fifty thousand parking spots are going away so we can
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: put these bins there. And it's not even across the board.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: There's some blocks I read that are losing a quarter
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: of their parking spots.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sure.
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: So it's definitely going to take an adjustment, for sure.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: But there won't be bags of trash everywhere. They'll just
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: be like different colored bins that are on the street,
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: just off the sidewalk that a truck comes along and
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: picks up. That it doesn't require human hands to throw
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: bag after bag into the truck anymore.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: Boy, in New York City, the residents really have to
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: get on board with this to make that work.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: Well, they did a pilot study of it in Harlem
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: and this is back in September twenty twenty three, and
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: apparently it was extremely successful. Yeah, rat sightings were down
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: sixty eight percent.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Where did they go?
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I think they just kind of where
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: they disappear. They go poof into nothingness after they don't
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: eat for two days.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: Boy, that means they're organizing. This could get really scary.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: But supposedly they the people of Harlem were like, this
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: is this is cool. We can definitely deal with this.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: So they're rolling it out to the rest of New York.
• 46:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: I think they will see the benefit to where people
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: get on board, because what real would really screw up
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: that system is that truck is going using the mechanics
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: to dump those cans, but then there's four or five
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: bags that wouldn't fit in the can just sitting there.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: So you're still going to have to have some people
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: down there slinging bags.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: Definitely, for sure, but it should.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: Speed up the whole thing and clean it up if
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: everyone If everyone chips in.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and isn't that what living in New York is
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: all about. Everybody chipping in a little bit.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: For sure.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: You got anything else?
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: No, just another mention of composting. They're getting that going
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, still pretty new program. Since twenty percent
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: of that total waste dis food waste. If they really
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: got a pretty efficient composting system going, then it would
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: do a lot to reduce trash and do better things
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: for Mother Earth.
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: So you did have something else I did. Well, if
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: you want to know more about New York trash collection,
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: go to New York and just walk around and you'll
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: find find out everything you need to know about it.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: And while you're booking your flight, how about it's time
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: for listener, ma'am.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: I'm going to call this what is this? Oh Arson investigation?
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: Hey guys. In twenty nineteen, I moved to Saint Paul
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: with some friends from college. It's really fun. I made
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: many new friends in back. Two of my roommates I
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: had never met. One was a local rapper, the other
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: was a firefighter.
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: EMT Saint Paul is the arson capital of the country.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: Is it really? It wouldn't surprise me. After listening to
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: this story, this guy said it was a glorious era
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: of my life, filled with healing, fun and young adulting.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: Within a few months, I got a job at a
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: discount movie theater and I was working one day when
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: the theater got a call from our boss and said, Hey,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: your house is on fire. You should come by. So
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: the firefighters walked me through the burning home. I saw
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: no flaims, but it was smok. I went up to
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: my room. Nothing was burnt there, which is great, but
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: it did smell like a bondfire for about a year
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: after that. Man, everyone was gone at the time, so
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: nobody was heard about a month later my landlord slash boss,
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: same person, which is why that sounded weird. Earlier I
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: mentioned that there was a big break in the fire investigation,
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: but made me do a little work to figure out
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: who it was. It turns out the firefighter EMT that
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: I lived with decided he didn't want to live with
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: us anymore, so a week before he moved a couch
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: to the basement and set it on fire and walked away.
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, with.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: I only found out because he admitted it to me.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: My life went haywire for a while after that, but
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: I'm happy to report that I'm settled in full on
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: adulting with love.
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: That is.
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: Teagan Tour is fantastic. Quite a great, great story. Thanks
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: a lot, Tegan, who saw that coming. I did not
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: me that was a twist that you'd find at a
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: discount movie theater.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: Well, if you want to be like Tea in and
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: send us an amazing story about something we talked about,
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: we love that kind of thing. You can send it
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: via email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.