After years of stops and starts, safety reforms are finally coming to New York City’s notoriously dangerous private trash collection industry.
On Jan. 2, businesses in a section of central Queens may only have their trash picked up by one of three companies selected by the sanitation department.
It’s the first of the city’s 20 “commercial waste zones,” which were established through City Council legislation passed in 2019. The new rules are intended to eliminate the circuitous routes taken by many private garbage trucks across several boroughs, which sanitation officials say leads to dangerous working conditions and more crashes. A report by the city found that 43 New Yorkers were killed in crashes involving the commercial waste industry between 2010 and 2019.
The zone reform has created fierce competition among salespeople for private trash haulers trying to sign up businesses from Ridgewood.
Sanitation officials have been waking the same beat as the salespeople, knocking on around 9,000 doors across the new zone and warning business owners that they’ll need to choose a new company to take away their trash or have one chosen for them. Businesses that don’t choose a carter in time will end up paying the maximum allowable rate since they won’t be able to negotiate with a waste hauler, said sanitation department spokesperson Joshua Goodman.