00:38:15 · Joshua Goodman, Joshua Goodman, Tracy Alloway
[00:38:15] S1: We do them. [00:38:16] S5: Every sanitation truck comes with a poster space on the side. We put anti-littering messages on those posters frequently. We've had longstanding relationships with the arts community. You've probably seen the early 90s David Lynch anti-littering ad that he did with the DSNY. It's something that we're interested in, but also I do think that we're at the point where we see the built environment as the bigger issue here. And I'll bring it back to some of the philosophy behind this. One of the thinkers who informed a lot of the work of the trash revolution that really gets at what you're talking about is a 70s urban planner named Oscar Newman, who wrote a book called Defensible Space that was basically what he did in the book was he said that controlling even for income, for age, for all demographics, He found that public housing still had, at that time, a higher rate of crime than market rate housing. [00:39:10] S1: And so what was the cause? [00:39:12] S5: And he proposed that there were elements of the design of the space that caused this issue, specifically that there were significant parts of many urban public housing developments that didn't feel like they belonged to anyone. [00:39:26] S1: They were everyone's. [00:39:27] S3: Oh, yeah. [00:39:28] S1: And so he proposed.... [00:39:30] S5: A design model that would be did. So the most famous example of his design is the Yonkers row houses that were the subject of Lisa Belkin's book, Show Me a Hero, that won her the Pulitzer, I guess. [00:39:44] S1: In the late 90s.
00:39:44 · Joshua Goodman, Joshua Goodman, Joe Weisenthal, Tracy Alloway, Joe Weisenthal
[00:39:44] S1: In the late 90s. [00:39:45] S5: A big part of what we were thinking with this was how do we apply that same finding about crime to cleanliness? What do we do that makes it so that every part of the city. [00:39:56] S1: Belongs to someone? [00:39:58] S5: So that cleanliness is not just about trash removal, but about real care for public spaces. That's one of the reasons why the Empire bins are assigned to a specific building rather than shared. It's one of the reasons that we have done a lot of sort of continued expansion of the property owners are required to clean 18 inches into the street, that we've done a lot of work on that, that we have been so focused on expanding the ways in which we enforce alternate side parking, street sweeping regulations, because there should be no part of the city where someone can litter or someone can observe someone else litter and think that is not my fault. And the design that Newman put into place has been broadly seen as effective. And we're hopeful that over the next five or so years, we'll see those same design elements work on the cleanliness space. [00:40:43] S4: Tracy, is it well known that don't mess with Texas, that phrase you hear a lot, was an anti-littering thing? [00:40:49] S3: I know about it because my dad's Texan. I lived in Dallas. [00:40:52] S0: Now everyone, don't mess with Texas, and people think it's some. [00:40:54] S3: Sort of political thing. [00:40:56] S0: But it literally is just, and it still is. [00:40:58] S3: No, I mean, some of the anti-littering campaigns. Exactly. But to your point, I.
00:40:58 · Tracy Alloway, Tracy Alloway, Joe Weisenthal, Joshua Goodman, Joe Weisenthal, Joshua Goodman
[00:40:58] S3: No, I mean, some of the anti-littering campaigns. Exactly. But to your point, I. [00:41:04] S2: Mean, this is also the problem with public shaming, by the way. If you see someone littering, they probably know what they're doing is bad, and so pointing out to someone who's doing a bad thing that what they're doing is bad is a little bit risky in New York sometimes. [00:41:18] S0: It could be, yeah. I'm still, I'm pro, I think I'm pro-shaming. [00:41:22] S2: I'm pro-public shaming, but that's different from saying that, like, I'm comfortable doing it constantly. [00:41:27] S5: We don't think of anything we do as shaming. We just want people to know, if you are someone who cares about your neighborhood, you are not alone. You are actually, in the majority, not the person littering. [00:41:36] S4: Can you talk a little bit about, you mentioned, okay, This containerization, it's in West Harlem. It's about to be in Brooklyn. So that's two of 59. [00:41:44] S5: Yes. [00:41:45] S1: And it will start going much faster. [00:41:46] S0: What is the roadmap? [00:41:48] S4: And you said the mayor is committed to funding it through. Does that mean it's not guaranteed currently that it will be rolled out to the entire city? [00:41:57] S1: No, it's guaranteed. [00:41:58] S5: I mean, we do annual budget cycles here. So the money's not literally there. But the commitment is as good as it gets to roll this out. And we've got strong support from the city council on this, too. [00:42:08] S1: You know, it's funny. When we first started this, we heard a lot.
00:42:08 · Joshua Goodman, Joshua Goodman, Joe Weisenthal, Joe Weisenthal
[00:42:08] S1: You know, it's funny. When we first started this, we heard a lot. [00:42:11] S5: Of concerns about pushback, and those concerns were mostly conceptual. I bet people will be mad about parking. [00:42:18] S1: We heard that a lot. [00:42:19] S5: Very few people are actually mad about parking, but we heard a lot. I bet people are going to push back. So as far as the rollout, It took, you know, 50 years to do the first district, another year to do the second, but we're going to do the remaining 57 in about five years as trucks start. [00:42:32] S1: Rolling off the line. [00:42:33] S4: Can you talk a little bit more about, you know, as you concede it to one fact, which is that you can't just copy and paste any other city's model onto New York City. So it's not, you know, even if containerization, et cetera, works, it's a little different. We might not have alleys. That's a difference. We might, whatever, every city is a little bit different. But then, as you mentioned, people can take a little bit too far and convince themselves that New York is just different. Yes, it looks like you can have, and then people really get dug in, and they come up with stories. Where does this impulse come from? That all around, you look at trash, and you have, like, there was an article in The New Yorker about, like, a trash anthropologist, and there was some quote that's like, oh, you don't understand New York. [00:43:15] S0: Is it really a city?
00:43:15 · Joe Weisenthal, Joe Weisenthal, Joshua Goodman, Joshua Goodman
[00:43:15] S0: Is it really a city? [00:43:16] S4: It's a series of sub-societies and blah, blah, blah, and it's just not like other cities, and that's why it doesn't work. Where does this impulse come from? This sort of, I would call it like an anti-New York exceptionalism. [00:43:28] S0: We just can't. There's something fundamental. We just can't have clean. [00:43:31] S5: I don't even think it's anti-New York exceptionalism. I think it's just a different manifestation of the same New York exceptionalism. Our trash is special in some ways. You know, our bags are a beautiful part of our landscape. And of course they're not. And the waste stream has changed many times before, you know. One of the impetuses for the creation of the Department of Sanitation in the first place was that in the mid to late 19th century, there were dead horses all over the city and nobody whose job it was to pick them up. And then throughout the early 20th century, many buildings had in-building incinerators. The primary waste stream that we picked up was piles of ash. And then that moved to solid waste and we had the landfill model. This stuff has changed many times before. And I think it's the same nostalgic impulse that you see, like, you know, why every movie is a sequel, you know, because people want what they grew up with. And I think one of the big things we're trying to do is remind people that what you should be proud of is what's under the trash. Right. [00:44:27] S1: It's not. [00:44:27] S5: And, you know, we've we've done this a lot of different ways over the years.
00:44:27 · Joshua Goodman, Joshua Goodman, Tracy Alloway
[00:44:27] S5: And, you know, we've we've done this a lot of different ways over the years. [00:44:30] S1: I'm sorry. [00:44:31] S3: Did you say what's under the trash? [00:44:32] S1: Sure. [00:44:32] S5: The streets, the people, you know, we have an artist that we've worked with for many decades. Mierle Laderman Ukeles did in the early 80s designed. a collection truck that's fully mirrored on the side. And the idea is called the social mirror. [00:44:47] S1: It's a great piece. [00:44:48] S5: And it was intended to remind people, I make the trash. When I see the trash, that's me. [00:44:54] S1: And unfortunately, we. [00:44:56] S5: Bring it out to parades now and people go, oh, it's the selfie truck. It's not the selfie truck. It's the truck with a deeper meaning behind it. But to your point about reproducibility and differences, the trash in New York, takes on sort of unique logistical space. We don't have the alleyways, we produce certain volumes, our density, but many cities face different challenges in the trash space and in other infrastructural areas. And I know a lot of them are looking at that now. Voters in Los Angeles have a ballot measure this year that would substantially rethink their structure of their public works agencies. I know Portland, Oregon just reorganized its city fleet asset management, D.C., eliminated the deputy mayor for operations two years ago and is now rethinking that decision. [00:45:41] S1: So, you know, these are the questions, right?