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Garbage isn't (supposed to be) stored on the street between pickups, you're only supposed to put them out on garbage day. The main issue is that garbage sits o
by potatolicious 13y ago
Garbage isn't (supposed to be) stored on the street between pickups, you're only supposed to put them out on garbage day.
The main issue is that garbage sits out in the sun for a few hours waiting for the truck to swing by, and gets, er, rather ripe in the meantime.
Many buildings do wheel their garbage out in standardized things that look rather like mine carts. Some do not, I wish there was more regulation in this regard - so at least garbage juice doesn't leak all over the sidewalk.
Note that this is really a Midtown Manhattan problem. In the residential neighborhoods the garbage situation is (relatively) under control - doesn't smell like roses, but you don't have garbage juice flowing like rivers down the sidewalk. A lot of the older Midtown buildings are too old to have internal garbage management, and are densely packed enough to produce a lot of garbage.
Midtown Manhattan is, IMO, one of the worst places a smell-sensitive person can find themselves. Ever.
- hunterrible 13y agoThe real reason Manhattan's garbage smells so bad is because they have no system for composting, which would remove the vast majority of rotting plant and animal parts from the standard waste stream. NYC is far behind other major cities in this regard, though they've been piloting the project in some of the outer boroughs recently.
- tomkarlo 13y agoMost NY apartments also don't have garbage disposals in their kitchen sinks, because they were banned until about a decade ago. Apartments that haven't been built or renovated since then generally won't have one. This further boosts the amount of food waste going into garbage cans.
- look_lookatme 13y agoParts of Chinatown are pretty bad, too. Sometimes it's pointless to even try to walk down the sidewalk on Eldridge, you just have to walk in the street.