Downtown Alliance is the Business Improvement District for New York City's Financial District. With tall buildings, narrow sidewalks and a rapidly growing residential population, the impacts of the piles of bags of trash and recycling on sidewalks in this area are significant. We identified operational and policy solutions.

Previously a commercial district for 300,000 workers, the waste in New York City's Financial District used to have little impact on streetscapes. It was picked up each night by commercial haulers or stored and collected from containers in loading docks. As the Financial District has become home to a growing population of over 60,000 residents, the bags of trash and recycling stacked on sidewalks have become a growing problem. There is simply not enough space on the narrow sidewalks to accommodate the huge piles of bags of trash and recycling set out for collection by the Department of Sanitation of New York (DSNY). While the Downtown Alliance cleans up litter and bags nearly 1,500 tons of public trash and collects 250 tons of public recyclables each year, it is not involved in managing residential waste. Yet, it is well aware of the impact of this waste on its members, and its own operations, and put out an RFP for a team to look at short and long term solutions.

ThinkWoven worked in a team led by ClosedLoops LLC, alongside Foodprint Group and Joseph Timpone, to conduct field studies to understand the impact of waste, and to come up with both operational and policy solutions. The research phase included visits to residential buildings and interviews with building and waste management staff; surveys of waste set-out throughout the district; in-depth analysis of special issues such as security barriers and pedestrian streets; waste forecasts for new planned residential buildings; meetings with urban planners working on as master plan of the area and; meetings with NYC’s Department of Sanitation (DSNY).

Solutions discussed with DSNY included a proposal to change collection schedules so both recycling streams and trash were not collected on the same day; shorter collection windows or a collection alert system so that waste could be set out closer to collection times; looking at opportunities to containerize waste, either through shared containers in the street, or temporary wheeled containers; and suggesting additional opportunities for collection of recyclable waste, including a drop-off for food waste within the public realm, like Boston had with their Project Oscar. This led to the Downtown Alliance public food scrap drop-off bins which have now been replaced by DSNY’s smart compost bin program.

Findings and recommendations for building managers culminated in an event series that promoted waste diversion, as well as a 20-page report, “Lower Manhattan Residential Sanitation Resource Guide for Residents and Property Managers.” This report includes tips on increasing recycling for residents, information about additional programs - such as textile and electronic waste programs - that buildings can sign up for; and strategies to decrease the volume of waste, such as installing cardboard balers, as well as strategies for incorporating roll-off compactor containers in new buildings.