New York Takes Out the Trash

Summary

HISTORY This Week: New York Takes Out the Trash

Release Date: November 18, 2024

Introduction

In this episode of HISTORY This Week, hosted by Alana Casanova Burgess, the focus is on New York City's enduring battle with waste management and its pervasive rat problem. Through an engaging conversation with Robin Nagel, an anthropologist in residence for the New York City Department of Sanitation and a clinical professor at NYU's School of Liberal Studies, the podcast delves into the historical and contemporary efforts to transform the city's sanitation infrastructure. The episode not only chronicles the evolution of garbage management in one of the world's largest cities but also highlights the societal and political dynamics that have shaped these efforts.

Current Efforts by Mayor Eric Adams

The episode opens with Mayor Eric Adams addressing the chronic rat issue plaguing New York City. Speaking passionately at a press conference held at a Lower Manhattan sanitation garage, Mayor Adams underscores his commitment to eradicating the rat infestation:

Eric Adams (02:19): "No, I have made it clear I hate rats. And we are going to kill some rats, that is."

Mayor Adams emphasizes the profound impact rats have on residents' daily lives and the city's public health:

Eric Adams (02:53): "If you walk down the block and a rat runs across your foot, you never forget it... and I hate rats."

He announces four new pieces of legislation aimed at overhauling the city's waste management practices, signaling a renewed focus on combating the root causes of the rat problem—primarily inadequate garbage disposal methods.

Historical Context of Garbage Management in NYC

The podcast provides a comprehensive historical overview of New York City's struggle with waste management, tracing its origins back to the city's founding days.

A. Early Years and Initial Challenges

When New York City was established as New Amsterdam by the Dutch, garbage management was virtually non-existent. Trash, including manure, broken pottery, and human waste, was commonly dumped along the city's tidal estuaries:

Wesley Levisay (07:14): "Peter Stuyvesant was the general director of the New Amsterdam colony. And in 1657, he said, look, there's these five locations. We're going to allow you to dump your trash."

This practice led to severe sanitation issues, as trash floated between rivers, creating persistent odors and attracting scavengers like pigs and rats.

B. Public Health Crises and Early Reforms

In 1702, New York City faced a catastrophic yellow fever outbreak, decimating approximately 10% of its population. This public health crisis highlighted the dire need for effective sanitation measures:

Wesley Levisay (12:10): "Cadwalader Colden... let's try something. The disease hits hardest in the dirtiest corners of the city. Let's clean it up."

Under Colden's guidance, the city implemented swamp drainage and enforced street cleaning laws, significantly reducing disease outbreaks and demonstrating the effectiveness of systematic public health interventions.

C. Aaron Burr's Attempt at Water Management

Post-American Revolution, as New York City's population surged, water scarcity became a pressing issue. Aaron Burr introduced a bill to establish a water company that would supply water from Westchester. However, Burr's ulterior motives sabotaged the project:

Wesley Levisay (13:23): "He formed a bank which evolved over... some poor schlub had to go into the basement of the JP Morgan bank headquarters and turn on a faucet and fill a bucket and say, yeah, we are a water company."

Burr's manipulation prevented the establishment of a reliable water infrastructure, exacerbating sanitation problems until the devastating Great Fire of 1835 underscored the urgent need for a robust water system.

D. Croton Aqueduct System

In response to the Great Fire of 1835, New York City embarked on constructing the Croton Aqueduct, which debuted in 1842. This significant engineering achievement provided the city with a steady water supply, facilitating the development of an effective sewer system and improving overall sanitation.

E. Tammany Hall and Corruption

During the mid-1800s, Tammany Hall, a dominant Democratic political machine led by figures like Boss Tweed, controlled New York City's politics through rampant corruption. This hindered genuine efforts to improve waste management, as sanitation workers were often bribed, leading to inconsistent and ineffective garbage collection:

Wesley Levisay (17:15): "There was money for it, but the understanding was, if I hire you to be a street sweeper and I pay you a salary, you give some of that salary back to the ward bosses..."

F. Gilded Age and Social Reforms

The Gilded Age saw a surge in wealth and population in New York City, intensifying the sanitation crisis. Wealthy women emerged as key advocates for municipal housekeeping, pushing for reforms to address the city's garbage woes. Their activism led to significant improvements, including the removal of large manure piles and enforcement of existing sanitation laws.

G. George E. Waring, Jr.'s Sanitation Reforms

In 1894, with the election of non-Tammany Hall mayor William Strong, George E. Waring, Jr. was appointed as the commissioner of street cleaning. A Civil War veteran with a background in sanitation engineering, Waring implemented military-style discipline and accountability within the Department of Street Cleaning:

Wesley Levisay (22:24): "George Waring... he brought a military hierarchy to the department of street cleaning, which still holds today."

Waring introduced curbside recycling and standardized uniforms to instill professionalism among sanitation workers. His reforms not only cleaned the streets but also laid the groundwork for modern sanitation practices, transforming New York City's public health landscape.

Modern Garbage Management Challenges

Fast forward to the present day, New York City is transitioning to containerization—replacing plastic garbage bags with solid plastic containers to deter rats. However, historical reliance on plastic bags has proven ineffective:

Wesley Levisay (29:27): "There does not exist a rat-proof plastic bag. The pounds per square inch of a rat jaw is pretty immense. That plastic bag will never, ever stop a rat."

This shift underscores the ongoing challenges in waste management, where outdated methods continue to contribute to environmental and public health issues. The convergence of factors like microplastics, landfill leachate, and persistent rat infestations highlights a critical inflection point in how the city approaches garbage disposal.

Conclusion

The episode concludes by reflecting on whether New York City's garbage crisis is a cyclical challenge or a pivotal moment driving systemic change. Robin Nagel expresses optimism that the current efforts represent a convergence of issues that could lead to sustainable solutions, rather than a temporary setback.

Wesley Levisay (30:10): "I hope it is the convergence of all of these very specific but overlapping issues that are coming together to put garbage far more centrally in our minds and in our strategies for how to create a healthy city."

As New York City continues its battle against waste and rats, the historical lessons and modern innovations discussed in this episode offer valuable insights into the complex interplay between urban development, public health, and effective governance.

Notable Quotes

• Eric Adams (02:19): "No, I have made it clear I hate rats. And we are going to kill some rats, that is."

• Eric Adams (02:53): "If you walk down the block and a rat runs across your foot, you never forget it... and I hate rats."

• Wesley Levisay (07:14): "Peter Stuyvesant was the general director of the New Amsterdam colony. And in 1657, he said, look, there's these five locations. We're going to allow you to dump your trash."

• Wesley Levisay (12:10): "Cadwalader Colden... let's try something. The disease hits hardest in the dirtiest corners of the city. Let's clean it up."

• Wesley Levisay (17:15): "There was money for it, but the understanding was, if I hire you to be a street sweeper and I pay you a salary, you give some of that salary back to the ward bosses..."

• Wesley Levisay (22:24): "George Waring... he brought a military hierarchy to the department of street cleaning, which still holds today."

• Wesley Levisay (29:27): "There does not exist a rat-proof plastic bag. The pounds per square inch of a rat jaw is pretty immense. That plastic bag will never, ever stop a rat."

• Wesley Levisay (30:10): "I hope it is the convergence of all of these very specific but overlapping issues that are coming together to put garbage far more centrally in our minds and in our strategies for how to create a healthy city."

Final Thoughts

This episode of HISTORY This Week masterfully intertwines New York City's historical sanitation challenges with current efforts to create a cleaner, healthier urban environment. By exploring the city's past missteps and triumphs, listeners gain a nuanced understanding of the complexities involved in waste management and public health. The insightful interview with Robin Nagel enriches the narrative, providing expert perspectives on both historical and modern initiatives aimed at eradicating the rat menace and improving overall city sanitation.

For more engaging stories that illuminate the pivotal moments in history, subscribe to HISTORY This Week wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

[Sally]

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[Sally]

Hey everyone, it's Sally here. As we head into the holidays, we just wanted to let you know that History this week is not going anywhere. Episodes will keep coming every Monday, so when you meet up with friends and family, you will be stocked with plenty of fun stories to share from the past. If you don't already follow History this week, wherever you listen to your podcasts and when you are showing off everything you learned from the show, make sure to tell them you heard it from us.

[Austin James]

The History Channel Original Podcast.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

History this week, November 18, 2022 I'm Alana Casanova Burches. New York City is at war. In fact, this war has likely been going on for nearly 300 years. It's the war on ra. And now new York is taking this battle to a new level. Today, Mayor Eric Adams is giving a press conference at a lower Manhattan sanitation garage to announce four new pieces of legislation aimed at solving this scurrying problem.

[Wesley Levisay]

To kick us off, I would like to welcome the greatest enemy the rats of New York City have ever had. Our Mayor, Eric Adams.

[Eric Adams]

Thank you, Council. That's right. No, I have made it clear I hate rats. And we are going to kill some rats, that is.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

It's estimated that New York City is home to 3 million rats. It's a massive number, but they may still seem harmless. They're even kind of cute, depending on who you ask. But unfortunately, they carry disease. They damage property. They can chew through almost anything, even brick. And most people really don't like seeing them out and about.

[Eric Adams]

If you walk down the block and a rat runs across your foot, you never forget it. Every time you walk down that block, you relive that. If you see a rat in your home, you never feel comfortable in that room in your house again, for whatever reason, I don't know what it is, rats do something to traumatize you, and you never live through it. And I hate rats.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

Big cities are often associated with rats, and New York is no exception. They're part of this image of a city that's not so clean. And it's true. Rats love garbage. In fact, that's most of their diet. So in order to tackle rats, you have to tackle trash. New York is the biggest city in the country, which means it has the most trash. And other cities have historically followed their lead when it comes to waste management. Right now, New York deals with its trash by leaving it in plastic garbage bags on the street, where sanitation workers will come scoop it up. Rats can chew right through those plastic bags.

[Eric Adams]

This is going to be a difficult task if we don't really deal with plastic bags, and I don't know who thought of these ideas about mint bags is going to stop rats. That's comical, you know? So we have to get garbage off our streets. That is our mission.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

The city government is focused on containerization, not putting trash in bags, but solid plastic containers, which, if used correctly, are rat proof.

[Eric Adams]

And so today, we're making clear that rats don't run our city. New Yorkers do. The four bills I signed today will help create a cleaner city for New Yorkers. The legislation will create.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

Today we're talking trash, specifically talking trash with Robin Nagel, anthropologist in residence for the New York City Department of Sanitation and a clinical professor at NYU's School of Liberal Studies. How was trash a problem from the earliest days of this city? And when did New York finally make a change and for a time, show the world how to handle its garbage?

[Austin James]

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[Wesley Levisay]

Hello everyone, My name is Wesley Levisay. From the History of the Second World War podcast. Join me on a journey through the most destructive conflict in human history. A journey that will take us not just through the famous campaigns and cataclysmic battles, but also to the lesser, well known corners of the war that touched millions all over the world as we try and answer not just the questions of what and where, but how and why. You can find history of the Second World War on all major podcast platforms.

[Austin James]

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[Alana Casanova Burgess]

Robin Nagel thanks for coming on History this week.

[Wesley Levisay]

Glad to be here.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

So let's start with just a simple question. Is New York special or important in some way in terms of understanding how we handle garbage around the world?

[Wesley Levisay]

New York is one of the largest cities on the planet. Eight point some odd million residents. But then the larger metropolitan region is somewhere north of 22, 25 million. I'm not sure exactly.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

That's not counting the rats.

[Wesley Levisay]

Oh no, that's not counting the rats. But we have had at various moments in our history, very unsuccessful strategies for dealing with garbage and then extremely successful strategies that were then imitated elsewhere.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

So maybe we should start talking about the history of New York City was called New Amsterdam when it was first established as a city by the Dutch. Did they have any model on how to handle garbage? How did they approach it?

[Wesley Levisay]

I don't know if they had a model. I know they had a problem.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

And what is trash in the colonial era?

[Wesley Levisay]

Ah, trash then would have been various forms of manure and street sweepings and broken pottery and frayed cloth that couldn't be used for anything else. Broken china, construction debris.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

And what about human waste?

[Wesley Levisay]

Very much so, yeah. Night soil, it's called.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

That sounds so lovely.

[Wesley Levisay]

It does. It sounds like something not in any way smelly or harmful. No, but that's what people put in their chamber pots and then dumped on the streets. And there was not in the beginning any organized way to deal with garbage. In 1657, Peter Stuyvesant, he passed a law or made an edict saying there were five locations where you were allowed to put your trash.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

Who was Peter Stuyvesant?

[Wesley Levisay]

Peter Stuyvesant was the general director of the New Amsterdam colony. And in 1657, he said, look, there's these five locations. We're going to allow you to dump your trash. They were all along the water's edge. The problem with putting garbage in the water, either in what was called the north river or the Hudson or the east river, those are not proper rivers. They are tidal estuaries. So you can throw out your trash there, and it will float north, and then after a while, it will float south, and then it will float north again and then south almost in perpetuity. And the more trash you add to it, the more you create a slop that had to be nauseatingly stinky. So that would have been a big part of the smell of the city.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

With all of that. Are there pigs?

[Wesley Levisay]

Oh, gosh, there are pigs. Absolutely there are pigs. And they are scavengers of first order, and they are an informal part of the city's waste management.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

And rats.

[Wesley Levisay]

Rats? Yes, rats. We have rats, of course. I have a colleague named Robert Corrigan who is one of the world's premier experts on rats, and he and I are on a slow but perpetual quest to figure out when rats first show up in New York City history. We're thinking the 18th century, but we don't know for sure. They did certainly come through by ships from Europe and elsewhere.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

I love that. That's an open question that we don't know.

[Wesley Levisay]

Yes, we don't know. They are native to Mongolia. They are one of the most successful species on the planet. There have been, as you probably know, lots of guesstimates about how many rats there are in New York. And are there eight rats for every person or three rats? No one knows. No one knows because they're rats.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

That's the nature of rats.

[Wesley Levisay]

How do you mean?

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

They're so sneaky.

[Wesley Levisay]

Well, they prefer darkness. Their eyesight isn't great, and they know the world through their. Oh, what are they called? I call them whiskers, but they have a proper name, Vibrissae. Oh, that's great. They're vibrissae. And they are, and here's the best word, thigmophilic, meaning they learn their environment through touch. So they're out in the world blurry vision, sensing things through their vibrissae and touching everything. And by smell, of course, to figure out, is there food, is there safe harborage, is there water, Is there a threat? I will confess an affection for rats. I don't want them in my home. I don't want them in my building. But when I see them on the street, I am immediately curious.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

So there are rats, there are pigs, there are smells. And is there illness then as well?

[Wesley Levisay]

There is disease. And that's a transformative moment. So 1702, yellow fever arrives. There's roughly 5,000 people live in the city at that point. And yellow fever seems to take people who are already vulnerable, newly arrived, not wealthy, not living in opulence. And so the interpretation of the day is that they are somehow more sinful than the rest of us, and therefore God is punishing them and killing them with this disease.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

So yellow fever is the city's first real public health crisis.

[Wesley Levisay]

Well, it's the most catastrophic. There were health crises at a sort of lower ebb all along, but this one killed slightly more than 10% of the population. That's a lot of people. And it was not until this guy, Cadwalader Colden, such a great name, Cod walled or Colden, who was a physician and said, let's. Let's try something. The disease hits hardest in the dirtiest corners of the city. Let's clean it up. And so, partly out of terror, the city father said, yes, all right, let's do that. So they drained swamps and they passed street cleaning laws that they finally actually enforced. And night soil was dealt with much more efficiently. And disease onslaughts going forward killed fewer people. So it proved the benefit of this very simple but really effective public health intervention.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

So then the American revolution happens, and that sort of stalls progress on this front. You wrote that even though there were some gains now that the city had been around for a while, the groundwater is starting to get contaminated. How did people try to deal with that?

[Wesley Levisay]

Yes, fresh water for the city was an increasingly urgent crisis. And Aaron Burr stepped in to try and solve it. And so he wrote what became a bill in the state legislature to found a water company that would bring water from Westchester and pipe it in and save the city, basically. And all of his colleagues were like, yay, Aaron, this is great. We certainly need this. This will solve the problem. And Aaron said, thanks, guys. And then while they weren't looking, he added a paragraph that gave him the right to do anything he wanted with any of the revenue to do anything at all.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

Sneaky Aaron Burr.

[Wesley Levisay]

Yep. And instead of actually building the infrastructure that he had promised, he formed a bank which evolved over quite a long time to what today is called JPMorgan Chase. And in fact, as I understand it, even until the 1920s, some poor schlub had to go into the basement of the JP Morgan bank headquarters and turn on a faucet and fill a bucket and say, yeah, see, we are a water company. See? But so Aaron Burr, in doing this duplicitous thing, he also made it impossible for anyone else to form a water company that would actually do what he said he had intended to do. So he locked it down, and New York was parched and stinkier than ever, and unhealthier than ever until the great fire of 1835, which burned for two weeks, you could see it from Philadelphia. And the pumps for the hoses didn't work. And then they pulled water from the rivers, but that didn't really work. And partly as a result of the fire, finally, city leadership said, we have to solve the water problem. And so fast forward. Lots of construction, lots of labor, lots of planning, lots of extraordinary engineering with, you know, like a pencil and a piece of paper. The Croton system made its debut in 1842.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

Right. This is the Croton Aqueduct system.

[Wesley Levisay]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

Which we still use today.

[Wesley Levisay]

We do indeed. Yes, we do.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

But it helps with the garbage problem as it relates to sewer, because water and can flush everything and it's working.

[Wesley Levisay]

You can actually build a sewer, which they didn't do at first. First they brought it in, but they didn't have a way of getting it out. And so, in fact, in the poorer neighborhoods, it created more problems than it solved because basements and low lying areas began to flood when they hadn't before.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

So getting back to physical trash, things are still pretty bad in the mid-1800s. Oh, yeah, right. New York City's population is now over half a million, which sounds so quaint now, but it's expanded well north of Wall Street. And this is around the time that Tammany hall is coming to power. Can you kind of define Tammany hall for us?

[Wesley Levisay]

Tammany hall was a Democratic political machine that very successfully, through extravagant corruption, owned all of the politics of New York. The challenge for street sweeping and waste management, general, there was money for it, but the understanding was, if I hire you to be a street sweeper and I pay you a salary, you give some of that salary back to the ward bosses, who give some of it back to their bosses above them, and it all plays Into Boss Tweed was the most famous or infamous of the Tammany hall leadership. But it was just spectacular corruption, and it ruled the city for decades, Decades.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

All of this corruption, as you're describing, leads to a situation where really not a lot of sanitation work is happening.

[Wesley Levisay]

Oh, no, very little. I mean, you'd send guys out with a broom, and they'd sweep, and then maybe later in the day, or maybe the next day, or maybe not at all, a cart would come to pick up the sweepings. But if I've swept on the corner and then the cart comes to collect that, two days later, that little pile isn't there anymore, of course, so. And when pressed about this, and there are all kinds of really rich examples in the local papers of like, why can't we have a cleaner city? Why is this so hard to do? The answer was, well, we're too diverse. There's too many people of too many different backgrounds, and we can't do it. It is impossible. So I appreciate your complaint, but this is the price of living in New York, which was a bald lie.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

And at this point, in New York City, people are kind of taking trash into their own hands, right?

[Wesley Levisay]

Well, if you were wealthy, you hired private people to come and deal with your waste. There were also informal. Like scavenging or gleaning was a pretty essential way for many New Yorkers to survive. There were people who did that work on the streets. There were also people who did that work on the boats when carts were being tipped into scows to be either taken by sea to landfill or dumped at sea. There were men who worked those boats finding material that then they were tossing to their families who lived under the docks, who were taking. Either they were saleable or edible, or they could be used for their own homes. But there was an entire informal industry of people whose livelihood was that informal system.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

So people who could afford to are basically throwing money at the problem and hiring people to take to cart their trash away. And there are a lot of people with money at this point in the city, right? The late 1800s, this is called the Gilded Age. How does that come into the history of how we take care of trash in the city?

[Wesley Levisay]

The Gilded Age gave rise to a movement among the wives and sisters and mothers of wealthy New Yorkers who looked at their obligations in a household and said, all right, we are the housekeepers of our own homes. We manage our own homes. The problem of garbage in the streets is a municipal housekeeping challenge. And we who are women who know how to housekeep and know how to manage. We are going to give you ideas about how to fix this problem on a municipal level. And they were a powerful political voice and they pushed local politicians to actually address some of the more, let's say colorful problems. There was a pile of manure on the east side in midtown that had been on this one pier for years. And it was tons upon tons upon tons of manure just sitting open. And the stench was nauseating and downwind. That's incredible, right? And it was against the law. But you can have all the laws you want if you don't enforce them.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

Until these rich ladies come along.

[Wesley Levisay]

The rich ladies threw their weight around. It took them six years, but they eventually got the guy. He was forced to clean it up.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

And then in 1894, finally there's a non tammany hall mayor elected. William Strong. And he turns to the sanitation issue. Who does he first try to bring to fix the problem?

[Wesley Levisay]

William Strong taps Theodore Roosevelt to be the commissioner of street cleaning. And Theodore Roosevelt says, in essence, hell no, it can't be done. Like, don't give me a helpless job where I'm destined to fail, right? I won't even try.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

So then the second choice is Colonel George E. Waring, Jr. Tell me about his background.

[Wesley Levisay]

He was a gentleman farmer and a self styled sanitary engineer. He was a master of self promotion. But he also was very clear eyed about how to solve the problem in New York City. And so it was some of the prominent rich ladies who went to William Strong and said, all right, Roosevelt turned you down, here's your man. So George Waring met with William Strong and he said, I will take this job on one condition. You let me do it my way. Don't interfere with my decisions and my strategies. And if you are unhappy with what I'm doing, of course it's your right to fire me, but leave me alone to do it. And William Strong said, okay, that's the deal. So Waring took the job and almost everyone around him is saying, you fool, you are doomed to fail. Is your cold making it hard for.

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[Wesley Levisay]

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[Austin James]

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[Alana Casanova Burgess]

It's 1895, and New York is filthy. The city's population has grown by well over a million people over the last century. And the metropolis simply hasn't kept up on the garbage front. There's trash and animal carcasses piling up and human waste in the streets. The popular wisdom is that the city simply cannot be cleaned. The challenge is too great. But Colonel George Waring takes the job anyway and becomes the new commissioner of the Department of Street Cleaning. He's just designed a new sewage system in Memphis, Tennessee, and his reputation precedes him to New York City.

[Wesley Levisay]

So George Waring, again, he is good at self promotion and he has a sense of what eventually would be called pr. He wants the public to understand that street cleaning and waste management is your first line of defense for public health. Who dresses in a way that is affiliated with public health? Well, doctors, nurses and nurses. And they wear white. So he put his street sweepers in white as a way of signaling to the public, these guys are protecting your health. He also put them in white because, as I like to put it, there was a surveillance element to this. It is. Remember, you're taking a workforce that until Waring showed up, never actually did much work. Right? If you're dressed in blazing white, it is a lot harder to sneak off to the pub for a pint in the middle of your shift. Right, because everyone knows you're supposed to be out there with your broom.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

What else does he do to reform the system? Can you talk about some of the values that he introduces?

[Wesley Levisay]

He brings what we came to be called curbside recycling to the city. It was all manual. It wasn't with any of the whiz bang kind of machinery that we have today. He also understood that in formalizing recycling, he was putting at risk the very people whose daily life depended on what they could glean from the trash. And these were mostly women and children who were in that kind of precarious position.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

Right, Glean. Because they're gleaners and that's like an actual job.

[Wesley Levisay]

Yes. And he hired women on the sort lines at these recycling facilities so that they're not left with nothing, so they can still feed their families.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

It sounds like maybe he set up a lot of the structures that we still use today in terms of sanitation in the city.

[Wesley Levisay]

Waring was a military veteran from the Civil War, and he brought a military hierarchy to the department of street cleaning, which still holds today. And other cities around the country imitate this. So a sanitation worker on the street today is the equivalent of a private in an army. And then you have the sergeant who is the supervisor, the foreman, and then the captain who is the superintendent, and then the chiefs. And they wear stars on their epaulets, just like in any other military. I've heard it called a paramilitary organization. That's not accurate. They're not jumping out of airplanes with brooms over their shoulders. They're a quasi military organization in the sense that the structure has a military rigidity and accountability to it.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

And that's a lot of accountability.

[Wesley Levisay]

It's a lot of accountability. And the slang. And it took me a while to figure this out. When you come in from your route, your supervisor or your superintendent may say to you, so did you get it up? And what they mean is, did you get the garbage up off the street? Did you finish the route you were assigned for that shift? And that is still a question. And there's a joke about, like, imagine a meteor hits the Bronx and it's chaos. The superintendent still wants to know, did you finish your route? Like, no matter what, did you finish your route? And that started with wearing back in the 1890s. There's this amazing two page spread in an issue of Harper's Weekly magazine in 1895 where it shows the before and after of eight locations around Manhattan. And the before you kind of gag looking at the picture. And then the after, you can see the curb lines and the cobblestones and the. It's. It is miraculous. And it's these guys in white uniforms who are credited with this transformation.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

New York City is now in the process of something referred to as containerization, which is such a bureaucratic and Serious term for basically put your garbage in bins so rats don't chew through the plastic bags and eat all the food inside. That's something that other cities have already figured out. Right. So, like, why do we use plastic bags? What's the history there?

[Wesley Levisay]

Plastic bags became common after the sanitation workers strike of 1968. And when they were negotiating to end the strike, one of the requests from the union was to get rid of the cans. With good reason. Metal cans rust and get dented, and people put the lids back on wrong and they fill with water. And metal cans were a source of real hazard for the workers and noisy, noisy for the public as well. Plastic bags at the time seemed like a smart solution. And some of the bag manufacturers promised that the bags were rat proof. There does not exist a rat proof plastic bag. The pounds per square inch of a rat jaw is pretty immense. That plastic bag will never, ever stop a rat. And even the mint scented ones that are supposed. That just gives the rats fresh breath.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

Well, that kind of brings us to the present day where we're talking about garbage. Like, garbage is in the air. It's like it's, you know, these little plastic particles are in breast milk and they're in dolphin breath. Then there are landfills leaking poisons into our groundwater. There's rats running the city. That's something that the mayor is telling us about all the time. And so I just wonder if we're really in an inflection point around garbage, or as you've been describing with this long timeline in New York City of struggling with garbage, if we're just like somewhat perpetually, but also cyclically having a moment with garbage. I don't know. What do you think?

[Wesley Levisay]

I love this question. I hope it's not just a cyclical moment. I hope it is the convergence of all of these very specific but overlapping issues that are coming together to put garbage far more centrally in our minds and in our strategies for how to create a healthy city. And just to correct you, Mayor Adams says that rats do not run the city. We do.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

Oh, sorry, sorry.

[Wesley Levisay]

That's the quote.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

It sure feels like rats run the city.

[Wesley Levisay]

From a certain perspective.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

Yes, from the rats perspective.

[Wesley Levisay]

So the challenge with the rats is we created the perfect conditions for what one of my colleagues calls a rat topia. We did it. We built it that way, and now we're freaked out about, oh, my God, we have so many rats. This is terrible. Rats. They're terrible, awful, scary little creatures who, by the way, are the reason that we have the levels of health standards that we do. Rats and mice are the test subjects for the majority of the drugs and medicines that we rely on to stay healthy. So we owe them our lives in a very real way. The challenge of garbage as a political issue is that in general, the public doesn't want to have to think about it. And I mean, if rats is the entry point, okay, fine, let's use rats as the entry point. With the other examples you mentioned, like microplastics in dolphin breath and leachate from landfills, those are also garbage slash waste discard problems. Not a problem that New York City can solve today, but it does put this broader context of waste, turning our attention to the problem in such a way that thankfully, it's a little bit more we have to deal with it. It's an us problem, not a them problem.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

Robin Nagle, thank you so much.

[Wesley Levisay]

What a pleasure. Thank you.

[Alana Casanova Burgess]

Robin Nagle is the anthropologist in residence for the New York City Department of Sanitation and a clinical professor at NYU's School of Liberal Studies. Her book is Picking up on the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City. Thanks for listening to History this Week, a Back Pocket Studios production in partnership with the History Channel. To stay updated on all things History this Week, sign [e-mail] and if you have any thoughts or questions, send us an email at historythisweekistory. This episode was produced by Ben Dickstein and produced and story edited by me, Alana Casanova Burgess for Back Pocket Studios. Our executive producers are Ben Dickstein and David Weisbord from the History Channel. Our executive producers are Eli Lehrer and Liv Fiddler. Don't forget to follow, rate and review History this Week, wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll see you next week.

[Sally]

Hey listeners, we just want to let you know that as we head into the holidays, History this Week is not going anywhere. You have plenty of new stories to share with family and friends, so when you're showing off everything you learned, make sure to tell them you got it from History this Week.