GameOfThrowns

UPDATE: We’ve added another weapon to our anti-litter arsenal!

Recently, Mayor de Blasio and DSNY Commissioner Garcia agreed to a request from Councilman Matteo and me to provide funding for specialized "litter patrols." Hearkening back to the old days, a team of Sanitation workers will be deployed three times a week to manually sweep and collect litter on borough streets, sidewalks and other public property.

Every little bit helps. These teams will focus on problem areas and known dump sites – but we need your help to identify these locations. If you wish to report litter or dumping, please call 311 or use the free BP Assist app on your cell phone.

Growing up, most everyone learns how to throw something.

In the case of a baseball, or a football, the object is to throw it on the fly, hopefully to be caught before it ever touches the ground. In basketball we strive to toss a ball through a receptacle called a hoop in order to score points. In none of these games is the object to throw something on the ground and simply leave it there for others to pick up.

So where and when, exactly, do folks begin to think that it’s OK to throw their garbage on the ground and leave it there, to believe that their trash ultimately belongs on someone else’s sidewalk, or on a public street or highway?

In this game of thrown stuff,
you either stop litter completely
or fight it eternally -

and I think we’ll be fighting it, if not eternally, for a long, long, time

We can no longer say,

because litter is already here.

thrown by litterjerks

without respect for their neighbors.

When I got to Borough Hall, one of the first things I did was expand the work of the Borough Hall Clean Team. Under the leadership of staffer Larry Collins, our Clean Team increased our cleanup efforts by 50%, and capitalizing on a unique collaboration with the Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment (CASES), they are out there on the front lines, picking up trash, cutting weeds, and generally undoing the work of the trashholes from April to November each and every year.

To supplement their work, I also provided funding to the SI Chamber of Commerce in order for them to hire an on-call trash removal team; I started funding this initiative while I was still a City Council Member and am happy to continue it as Borough President. The bid was won by a Staten Island company, Project One, and they are out there cleaning many of our communities, usually the more difficult and arduous cases.

Empire State Bank has greatly assisted us by “adopting” the area surrounding the New Dorp Train Station and helping us fund the cleanups through our Operation Clean Town initiative.

Another of our successes in the first year was the cleanup and maintenance of the former “No-Man’s Land” on New Dorp Lane adjacent to Miller Field, which in the past, because of government jurisdictional disputes, was not attended to by any agency.

A key component of our anti-litter efforts has also been our work to partner with government agencies:

Property under the care and control of any agency should not be left unmaintained and allowed to accumulate litter, creating an eyesore for Island residents. For this reason, we have worked closely with the Parks Department and other city agencies to conduct large scale perimeter cleanups of the areas near the Greenbelt.

Sometimes these cleanups necessitate the closure of some road roads (e.g. Travis Avenue, Forest Hill Road, etc.) for several hours at a time: really inconvenient, but really necessary.

The fight against litter is more than simply asking the good folks who are our borough’s keepers to clean up the mess made by slobs; it also involves working to change the hearts and minds of all people - by any means necessary.

We have tried to accomplish this in many ways;

A Litter PSA Contest that involved Staten Islanders
filming their own Public Service Announcements,
urging their neighbors not to litter;

A sign campaign we call Trash Talk,
featuring notable Staten Islanders urging folks not to toss trash;

And a partnership with the radio station Q104.3,
seeking to encourage Staten Islanders to keep their borough clean.

Local businesses also play an important role; they can either be a strong ally in the fight against litter – or they can be an uncaring hindrance. Businesses, like homeowners, are required by city law to clean not only the sidewalk in front of their stores, but an area 18 inches off the curb into the street.

To increase awareness of this regulation, we instituted a “Clean the Eighteen” campaign. We know, however, that not every business is as meticulous with this as, for example, Vinny from Pastosa on Forest Avenue, and others storeowners like him who meet their obligations every single day, and we are determined to make that right.

To help encourage businesses to join us in becoming part of the solution we created the “Operation Clean Sweep” initiative, and brooms and pans donated to us were provided, free of charge, to businesses who asked for them.

This program was extraordinarily well received and our entire inventory of supplies dwindled
very quickly.

However, there are still a number of storeowners who continue to shirk their responsibilities, and so we have asked the Department of Sanitation to break out the proverbial “stick,” and start issuing summonses for the most egregious violators. Please understand that it is not our intent to fine a businessman that sweeps as required, only to have a slob litter in front of the store an hour later. But when garbage in front of the store has been observed to be there for some time - they should expect consequences. DSNY has agreed to target such persistent violators.

Pedestrian litterjerks will not be immune to consequences either; the NYPD will, if possible, target individual litterers and, if they catch them in the act of littering, will issue warnings or summonses.

Another important component in the fight against litter is educating our youth about the selfishness, unhealthiness and the negative impact on quality of life that come with being a litterjerk.

In 2015 my office joined a unique public-private partnership with Pratt Industries, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), the NYC Department of Education and GrowNYC: the initiative is called Jason Learning, an age-appropriate curriculum that aims to teach students both the negative effects of littering and the necessity to recycle. In the first year, educators from 10 Staten Island schools were trained in the implementation of Jason Learning; after the second year, educators from 35 schools were trained. This gives us great hope for the future.

Finally, the last two years has seen the arrival of important reinforcements.

Thanks to a City Council anti-litter initiative, Council Members Matteo (Mid-Island) and Borelli (South Shore) have funded a team led by the non-profit Where to Turn to act as their own Clean Team. This has greatly increased the number of litter locations that have been cleaned, and I’m excited that we are all working together in our shared goal of cleaning up Staten Island.

We will also continue creating new and edgy advertising campaigns, like the “Litterjerk” poster campaign currently in use on the
Staten Island Ferry.

The future will bring further collaboration between and among elected officials to clean more problem spots, and we are constantly exploring new ways to combat litter, including possibly a Madvac Outdoor Litter Collection vehicle. It is the coolest thing: picture a very large riding mower with a super trash-vacuuming system instead of blades.

The first step in curing a problem
is naming it:

In this Game of Throwns,
we will not bend a knee.