City sanitation workers battling massive snow and ice piles left by last week’s storm have kept up with trash collection — but have fallen a day behind on recyclables.
“Given that the same sanitation workers who pick up trash have been clearing the foot of snow and ice that fell last Sunday, we are about one day behind on collection, and we ask for patience from New Yorkers while we catch up,” Department of Sanitation spokesman Josh Goodman told THE CITY.
“We are prioritizing trash and compost — the stuff that can smell — over recyclables, but we are picking up all streams, all across the city, just on a slight delay,” he added.
The Department of Sanitation is running hundreds of trucks through extended 12-hour shifts until they’re caught up, Goodman said.
The department is also running 193 basket trucks to collect from the approximately 23,000 litter baskets across the five boroughs. The city is running them in two shifts, as opposed to a normal three, to clear them out, he added.
The agency has also planned for garbage underneath the giant snow piles. The large snow melters seen across the city have filters to catch any loose trash, Goodman said. He also noted that commercial waste is collected through private carting companies, which could add to the trash-strewn streets.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani praised the work of the city’s sanitation department at a frigid press conference at the top of the municipal building on Monday. The agency is still being led by acting commissioner Javier Lojan, a holdover from Eric Adams’s administration.
Approximately 2,500 sanitation workers are putting in overtime in 12-hour shifts instead of the normal eight hours. The department also has 500 additional emergency workers doing the painstaking — and frigid — work of snow removal.
“I know that they are working with everything that they have to come up to speed, and that will continue to be a focus for us,” Mamdani said. “What we want is a city where New Yorkers can return back to their lives as they were. We know that this cold is not going to help us.”
Last Sunday’s snowfall of around 10 inches and the sub-freezing temperatures in the days that followed have proven to be a logistical test for the new mayor in his first few weeks on the job.
Mamdani updated the death toll of people found outside to 16 New Yorkers, saying 13 appear to be due to extreme cold, and three were likely overdoses.
Ten of the 16 people were on a “by name” list of persistent street homeless people who interact with outreach teams, a spokeswoman told THE CITY.
Mamdani said that none of the people who died appeared to be living in encampments. The mayor has been criticized for changing a policy of destroying encampments to encourage people to go into more permanent shelter.
The city has deployed 20 warming buses near hospitals, opened warming centers at 11 NYC public hospital health centers and boosted outreach on city streets.
On Sunday, his administration announced an “emergency expansion” of 50 single-room shelter rooms in upper Manhattan, which opened Monday.
But there have been issues with getting the word out about the available options to the most vulnerable. A report Monday from Gothamist showed that despite a warming bus parked outside the Staten Island Ferry, nobody inside knew it was there.
“I think we have to use every single option we have to get New Yorkers inside,” Mamdani said.
