00:28:24 · Joshua Goodman, Joshua Goodman, Tracy Alloway
[00:28:24] S1: And then we work with. [00:28:27] S5: a firm that specializes in getting the two sets of electronics to talk to each other. [00:28:31] S1: And we've got. [00:28:33] S5: Probably about 20 of them operating now out of our full fleet of 2,300 or so, but they'll continue to come in as this program rolls out over the next. [00:28:41] S1: Five or six years. [00:28:42] S2: I want to go back to something you touched on earlier, which is deciding where the bins actually go, because this is a meaningful way in which the Department of Sanitation might actually change the look and feel of of New York. So when you're choosing where to put a bin, I mean, as you said, space is at a premium in New York and there's a bunch of other stuff that could go in that bin space. You could have a parking space being the obvious one or, I don't know, a space for deliveries or people to get in and out of taxi cabs, whatever. Talk a little bit more about the decision-making process for doing that and how you're judging the value of collecting trash versus other things. [00:29:20] S1: Absolutely.
00:29:20 · Joshua Goodman, Joshua Goodman
[00:29:20] S1: Absolutely. [00:29:22] S5: One of the reasons that we were not interested in the European model of shared containers for the most part is because you then face this challenge of like, well, why is it in front of my house and not your house if it's for both of us? Under the model we came up with where larger buildings support their own bin, it's in front of your building. because it's for your building. So that eliminates a lot of the concerns about spatial jockeying. Okay, I live in a 50-unit building, we get an empire bin, and it goes right in. [00:29:49] S1: Front of the building. [00:29:50] S5: And it's important to remember that while this is taking up curb space, it's freeing up sidewalk space where the bags are currently kept for collection. So you get that space back for pedestrians. We've also heard, especially in West Harlem, from quite a few supers and waste managers who say, I love that I don't have to keep it in the building anymore. [00:30:12] S1: I just got. [00:30:13] S5: 30 to 50 square feet of building space back without any new additional construction because where I used to put the trash, it can now go straight into the bin outside. [00:30:24] S1: That said, the street layout issues are huge.
00:30:24 · Joshua Goodman, Joshua Goodman
[00:30:24] S1: That said, the street layout issues are huge. [00:30:27] S5: And we work very closely with the City Department of Transportation on coordinating around some of the things that I mentioned, you know, hydrants, curb cuts. We don't take designated handicap spaces. We've also in BK2, the second district that's coming online, we were interested in piloting shared containers within our locked model. by buildings that opt in to share. So we said, you know, two small buildings decide they don't qualify on their own, but they. [00:30:56] S1: Want to share one. [00:30:57] S5: And that actually really exposed some of the street limitations. There were a handful of buildings that were interested and they were on streets with full no parking, no place to put them. So it's something we'll continue to explore in future zones. But absolutely, you know, we think that the initial, what we call the future of trash report back in spring of 22, where we sort of first began to. [00:31:18] S1: Look at the feasibility of this in a meaningful way. [00:31:21] S5: Said that on-street containerization could take up to 150,000 parking spaces. Now, that was before we had gotten into, and that's out of 3 million total in the city. That was before we had gotten into some of the details. Once we had analyzed it much further and gone down the road on implementation, we're now looking at about a fifth of that. When we went back and did the Back to the Future of Trash report, we found that it was more like 30,000 spaces at full rollout, and it could be fewer based on the opt-ins.
00:31:21 · Joshua Goodman, Joe Weisenthal, Joshua Goodman, Joe Weisenthal
[00:31:21] S5: Said that on-street containerization could take up to 150,000 parking spaces. Now, that was before we had gotten into, and that's out of 3 million total in the city. That was before we had gotten into some of the details. Once we had analyzed it much further and gone down the road on implementation, we're now looking at about a fifth of that. When we went back and did the Back to the Future of Trash report, we found that it was more like 30,000 spaces at full rollout, and it could be fewer based on the opt-ins. [00:31:49] S4: Can we just talk a little bit more about the perspective of the sanitation workers? So first of all, how many are on a truck right now? [00:31:56] S1: Two. There's two people on a truck. [00:31:58] S5: Currently. Yes. [00:31:58] S0: And it will still be two under the new- That's correct. [00:32:01] S5: Yes. [00:32:02] S0: And how does. [00:32:02] S4: Their walk me through literally what they physically do? They go and collect it, et cetera. How does it look different now or future versus now?
00:32:02 · Joe Weisenthal, Joshua Goodman, Joshua Goodman
[00:32:02] S4: Their walk me through literally what they physically do? They go and collect it, et cetera. How does it look different now or future versus now? [00:32:09] S5: Yes. So sanitation workers have an incredibly difficult job. They're out there collecting 12 to 13 tons of trash in- all weather, in all conditions. They can't say, you know, I couldn't get to it today, right? There's an expectation that it'll be gone. And about 50% of their line of duty injuries are sprains and strains from throwing bags. So we're excited to see that go away. There are about 6,500 people with the title of sanitation worker out of 10,000 people total at the department. So those are the people who are actually collecting and processing your trash. They are subject to a number of hazards on the job. One thing we've seen a big increase is being poked by needles. We assume it's from an increase in GLP-1 usage with people. [00:32:53] S1: Buying them online.
00:32:53 · Joshua Goodman, Joshua Goodman, Tracy Alloway
[00:32:53] S1: Buying them online. [00:32:54] S5: And it comes with an instruction booklet, but they don't necessarily read it because it came from an online pharmacy and whatever. And then they think, this is trash. I put it in the bag and it goes away. And so a big thing that we want people to remember, of course, is a human being handles your garbage. But the move to mechanized collection, the side-loading truck, in high density areas will make a huge difference for the backs and knees of sanitation workers. They go out, they begin their day with a roll call at their garage. I mentioned the city's divided into 59 districts. They start at one of their assigned district. They do a roll call, they get their assignment for the day. [00:33:28] S1: There's a big. [00:33:29] S5: Electronic board where they find out where they're working that day. They go out with their partner and they collect the trash. And then in many, but not all districts, they get to dump it at the transfer station on the same shift. Some districts where the routes are optimized differently, it's another shift comes in and empties the truck so that it's empty when people come back. [00:33:48] S1: In the morning. [00:33:50] S5: These are people who deal with every possible situation you can imagine. And if we can get it so that they are not lifting your garbage as much, it will. [00:33:57] S1: Make a huge difference. [00:33:58] S3: What happens to bulky waste under the new system?