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