New Guide Details How To Reduce Trash Piles In Lower Manhattan

FINANCIAL DISTRICT — The Alliance for Downtown New York is hoping to improve Downtowners' residential trash woes — a result of a residential boom the neighborhood has seen in recent years.

In a newly released residential waste guide for residents and property managers, the Alliance detailed myriad ways individuals and developers alike can reduce mountains of garbage bags on the Manhattan tip's often narrow sidewalks.

The Alliance says the number of people in Lower Manhattan has tripled since September 11th.

The population of children in particular increased by nearly 250 percent in the Financial District between 2000 and 2010, according to Community Board 1's most recent budget requests statement. Since 2010, at least 10,000 residential units have been added or planned, the CB 1 report said.

With that growth, trash and increased vermin have become the ire of locals.

The Alliance's guide details how sanitation improvement can start with residents, building owners, and property managers.

On Friday, the Alliance led a tour at 50 West St., showing how this building's management is working to improve trashed streetscapes and increase recycling rates through the Department of Sanitation's free programs for organics, electronic waste, and textiles collection.

The Alliance's guide found that 20 percent of properties in the neighborhood have taken advantage of the city's free diversion services — which leaves plenty room for improvement, the business improvement district said.

The Alliance highlighted another sanitation fix called mechanical "balers" to reduce how much space loose recyclables take up. The luxury, 64-story condo at 50 West St. has such a baler.

But balers aren't just for the uber-rich, Downtown Alliance President Jessica Lapin said.

She said new developments with affordable units would likely be able to foot the bill for a baler too, which cost $7500 to $9000 or can be leased for $400 to $500 a month, the guide says. The Alliance's guide says larger developments with over 100 units are best suited for balers, which has types that can crush cardboards, metals, and plastics.

"They're not very expensive, and they can make a big difference in terms of reducing the bulk of the weight that's going out," Lappin said.

One challenge with balers, said Lappin, is retrofitting old buildings without enough dedicated space.

In the Amazon-era with a surge of cardboard waste, Lappin said, "It's a lot less tedious work for the building staff."

Balers can reduce 52 bags of loose recyclables to just four stacks of bales, according to the guide.

The Alliance also wants to work with the city on policies to encourage large-scale developments to build waste infrastructure into their properties, Lappin said.

These fixes can divert loads of residential garbage from greenhouse-gas-emitting and climate-change-contributing landfills, said advocates who helped put together the guide, including ClosedLoops, a sustainability firm also involved in a project to improve sanitation concerns in Chelsea in the Meatpacking District.

"We're impacting ourselves. We're cleaning up our streets," Tal Zaken, a partnerships manager at the Sanitation Department, said of such efforts. "We'd start to see those big mountains of trash bags on the streetscape disappear."

Read the Alliance's full guide and upcoming zero waste events for residents and property managers here.