Tell Mayor Adams and your City Council Member to #GetSanitationDone and ensure #CleanStreetsForAll!

Our City is facing a sanitation crisis.

Whether it’s overflowing litter baskets, street drains stuffed with litter, derelict cars, the infamous mountains of black trash bags, illegal dumping, or the exploding rat problem—it’s clear that the quality of life for New Yorkers navigating our streets has dropped drastically. The solution is simple—our city requires significant investments in ensuring clean streets for every single block.

But in the preliminary budget proposal unveiled by Mayor Eric Adams, the Department of Sanitation's (DSNY) budget is reduced by nearly $50 million, coming on top of previous budget cuts due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Cutting the sanitation budget during a crisis is unacceptable.

The Mayor and the Council must work to restore and expand DSNY's funding as the budget is finalized, a process that will last through the end of June. If we all work to share our concerns about the trash and sanitation crisis in our City, the Mayor and Council could reverse the proposed cuts as the City's budget is finalized.

The cuts proposed specifically target the City's organic waste collection program, which diverts organic waste from our current waste stream and makes it available for composting and other recycling methods. Organic waste makes up 1/3 of our City's waste stream, and contributes significantly to the nearly half-a-billion dollars the City spends on exporting trash to distant landfills. Organic waste collection and composting takes food scraps and other waste out of trash bags, which are easily accessible to rats and other rodents, and places it in rigid "brown bins," which are rodent-resistant. Further, the current methods of dealing with organic waste—landfilling and incineration—emit greenhouse gases and are a significant contributor to climate change. Implementing organic waste collection is essential for the City to meet its environmental justice, waste equity, and Zero Waste goals.

Mayor Adams and the City Council must restore and expand sanitation funding to equitably clean our streets, mitigate the growing rat problem, and combat climate change. Add your name: