Waste

Our trip to NYC in May was lovely, but I have always found the waste in NYC & surrounds confronting, so much is tossed without a care, or so it seems & we didn’t really see anything that sorted, ie cardboard separated from plastic etc.

I can’t understand how people are so blind to the issue at hand, all that rubbish has to go somewhere. According to some sources New Yorker’s apparently throw our 10,000 tonnes of rubbish every day – EVERY DAY! All of that rubbish has to be transported our of the city & it goes as far as Ohio, Pennsylvania & even South Carolina.

I can totally see how it is, we were caught out a few times, trying to avoid plastic, ordering what turned out to be craptastic fries that came with plastic forks, snow cones that were wrapped in plastic, being given straws when we didn’t want any and a few other things. Central park has bins overflowing with rubbish (& no recycling bins)

It made a lasting impression on the kids, who had never seen that much rubbish in their lives. We are a family that went from one small rubbish bag a week, years ago, to one every couple of weeks & now put out garbage every month or so. Even recycling is every couple of weeks. We honestly compost more than we throw out.

I hope that change comes to places like NYC that have been listed as some of the most wasteful cities, we can’t keep ignoring the issue. NYC should also remind other places why they need to do better too.

Nice city, but the waste issue needs to be tackled, to make the city even better.