Trashiest nabes

Time Out New York / Issue 647 : Feb 20–26, 2008. By Lisa Freedman

The city exports 12,000 tons of residential and municipal waste every day. (And no, it doesn’t all get dumped in Jersey.) Here’s a look at which neighborhoods in Manhattan produce the most garbage. Shame on the UES!

The City of New York Department of Sanitation (DSNY) is the largest cleanup workforce in the world. Some 10,000 hardy souls help collect our reeking heaps and ship them to landfills and incinerators throughout New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and South Carolina. The map below is zoned by community board and based on the combined neighborhoods’ weekly average waste tonnage in ’07. “Population density plays the largest role in determining how much refuse is generated,” says DSNY spokesperson Matthew Lipani. According to 2005’s Residential and Street Basket Waste Characterization Study though, residents of low-density areas actually generate more waste than residents of denser neighborhoods. How can that be? More space means more consumption and more consumption means more trash.

Despite all the landfill jokes, S.I. is still the borough with the least waste (only 3,859 tons in an average week!). To find out which neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx are the trashiest, go to timeoutnewyork.com/inyc.

Posted by Madame Lamb on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 9:29 AM