Department of Sanitation Now Seizing Carts of Cans and Bottles?

This image has been archived or removed.

Sanitation workers clipped a granny cart of cans on Grand, Photo: @shadinyc

The sight is as common on the streets of Chinatown as loogie-hocking pedestrians. Older Chinese women rummaging through garbage bags to snatch cans and bottles for a payday. Many of the collectors work at night, and often bring along their children. It’s a hyper-competitive climate that can get ugly.  We once witnessed two ladies battling it out in front of 88 Orchard over a pair of trash bags.

The redeemable bounty is sometimes stored in grocery or granny carts locked to the street furniture, rarely disturbed by anyone. However, a Boogie follower on Instagram noticed that the Department of Sanitation clipped one such cart at the corner of Orchard and Grand this weekend. That pissed him off, and he shared the following.

In Chinatown where I live I see a lot of elderly and poor asian people collecting cans and bottles all day and night to make ends meet. They keep their shopping carts locked to street poles because they mostly live in walk ups too high to carry up and they do it so often that it makes life easier to lock up for a few hours while they rest. For the first time ever today I find New York city sanitation workers with bolt cutters clipping theirs carts off of poles and crushing them. No notice no warning just discarding them. What’s up with that? Since when do sanitation decide what gets locked to a pole? This really pissed me off. I can’t stay quiet about this.