Earth Day '22: NY Leads Big States, Cities for Discarded Waste Deaths

by STEVE SPACEK

TWITTER @litterscorecard

April 22, 2022 – NEW YORK CITY remains the leader for all major American communities in the totality of annual deaths in 2020 from encounters with waste and related debris on public spaces: roads, sidewalks, trails and parks, said Steve Spacek, a national public performance specialist and Director of the American State Litter Scorecard.

Furthermore, NEW YORK STATE saw a 35 percent increase in these type of fatalities in the same time period.

Data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration indicates the City of New York, in 2020, suffered the highest fatality total--at least 15 killed—among 1000's of incorporated American urban communities. The Empire State outside of the City’s five Boroughs observed an additional 20 of these deaths, "life-ending incidents that can occur anytime and under all types of weather," said Spacek. Nationally, roughly 3 Americans were killed per day in that year, with over 800 persons losing their lives.

In 2020, the Scorecard placed NYC on the "USA's 15 Big, Litter Polluted Cities" list; metropolises with a 375,000 or more population that suffer outrageous unremoved volumes and large expanses of solid waste. Wastes “quite capable of breeding, transmitting Covid and numerous other unhealthy viruses and diseases,” Spacek said.

Since the first Earth Day in 1970, over five decades of Gallup polls continue to find "a majority of New Yorkers and Americans alike have great concern for pollution and its management by government," said Spacek, who thinks years of inappropriate littering by thousands within the Empire State has created “cruel, present-day environmental degradation conditions with no true resolute end game in sight.”

Spacek thinks adopting Comprehensive Recycling will help. “New York is now among the two largest states in America (the other, Texas) without Comprehensive Waste Recycling, practices that would mandate disposed waste reductions while increasing energy cost savings in everyday governance operations. Enacting recycling in the 62 Counties and in 1,500+ Communities would help match, or steal away a “We’re America’s Green #1” thunder touted by rival officials in California, Florida, Minnesota, North Carolina, Washington State, Maryland, Oregon and Utah.”

website: litterscorecard.com