Clare Miflin urges on-street containers for all waste streams
Clare Miflin says waste containerization affects litter, diversion, and public space. She argues Intro 987 should cover all waste types DSNY collects, not just trash, and that on-street containers maintained by DSNY would be easier for block associations and better for commercial corridors.
Thank you, Council Member Sanchez.
It's great to be able to testify.
I mean, as we heard, environmental justice issues are a lot about reducing trash, increasing diversion of recycling and food scraps, and also the quality of our public space.
Is there a lot of litter as trash around?
And how we do waste containerization affects that.
Like we're doing trash only waste containerization.
And we know if you make something more convenient, it gets used more.
And if you make something less convenient, it's a heavier lift.
So while I'm really happy to see Intro 987,
With its aim of having less bins permanently on sidewalks, increasing accessibility, moving all that to the street, the fact that it's just for trash means it's not going to solve the problems it could.
And the fact that you need to get a group of buildings together and they have to have a maintenance agreement, that's a huge lift for a block association to agree to maintain the buildings or for one building to agree to maintain.
A container that's used by several buildings, that's a huge lift.
What I would like to see is on-street containers for all waste types that the Department of Sanitation maintains.
They need two guys on a truck.
One is automated.
Only one needs to...
Or to operate the truck, the other one could be sweeping around the containers.
You know, it's easy for them to maintain them as they service them.
So I really think that bill should be re-looked at, and it should be all the waste types.
And especially for, like, all our main streets where we have storefronts on the ground floor, there's no space for bins apart from in front of those storefronts.
And it's not good for those businesses to have their storefronts blocked by all these bins, and it leads to all this litter.
So if those residents could just take their waste straight to the street instead of a bin in front of the storefront.
They're saving, those buildings are saving up to $200 per dwelling unit per month.
There's lots of affordability.
We get more diversion.
The streets are cleaner.
So I would really love to see that bill changed.