Tags: Department of Sanitation

Join Mr. Ted Nabavi, Director of Waste Management Engineering at DSNY, for a behind-the-scenes tour of the Fresh Kills Landfill Leachate Treatment Plant. Leachate, a landfill by-product, is created when water seeps through solid waste. Leachate treatment includes biological and chemical treatment to remove harmful constituents so the treated water can be safely discharged.

Mierle Laderman Ukeles first toured Fresh Kills Landfill in 1977. She had just been appointed the New York Department of Sanitation’s first (and only) Artist-in-Residence. At that time, there were landfills in every borough except Manhattan, and Fresh Kills was known as the largest municipal landfill in the world.

Enjoy Freshkills Park’s unique experience and spectacular views at the last Discovery Day of the year. During this free event, 700 acres and eight miles of trails in the normally closed site will be open, with opportunities to explore and learn about the landfill-to-park project.

Freshkills Park will offer a Discovery Day event on May 15th, 2016 from 11am to 4pm. During this free event, 700 acres and eight miles of trails in the normally closed site will be open, providing opportunities to explore and learn about the landfill-to-park project.

Freshkills Park will offer a Discovery Day event on Sunday, May 15th from 11am to 4pm. Thanks to the support of program partners, sponsors, and collaborators, there will be lots of ways to discover the landfill-to-park project.

5K Run/Walk
Just before Discovery Day begins, the Mid Island Rotary Club of Staten Island will host a 5K Run/Walk at the park starting at 10:30am.

Freshkills Park will offer Discovery Day on May 15th from 11am to 4pm. During this free public event, 700 acres of the otherwise closed site will be open for outdoor recreation, providing opportunities to explore and learn about the landfill-to-park project.

Fifteen years ago this week, the final barge of household garbage arrived at Fresh Kills Landfill. To celebrate this milestone, the website’s new interactive landfill-to-park timeline illustrates almost 100 years of changes in the area.

The last barge to Fresh Kills marked the end of 53 years of landfill operations.

The work of Mierle Laderman Ukeles, the artist-in-residence for the NYC Department of Sanitation for the past 30+ years, is featured in a new book edited by Kari Conte titled “Seven Work Ballets.” According to Sternberg Press, the book focuses on a series of seven grand-scale collaborative performances that took place between 1983 and 2012 in New York, Pittsburgh, Givors, Rotterdam, and Tokamachi.

“I always wanted to get into environmental science to clean up hazardous waste,” Ted Nabavi said in his recent interview with Urban Omnibus. Ted has been working with DSNY for over 25 years, currently as the Director of Waste Management Engineering for the Bureau of Solid Waste Management.

This material originally appeared in NYC zerowaste’s January 2016 newsletter. Freshkills Park proudly supports DSNY and NYC zerowaste in helping New York City send zero waste to landfills by 2030. 

Freshkills Park has a lot to be thankful for. In honor of Thanksgiving, we would like to express our gratitude to:

DSNY for their partnership on this great project.

Park Manager Bonnie Williams and her wonderful crew for caring for those sections of Freshkills Park already built.

At around 95% air, Expanded Polystyrene foam (EPS) is incredibly buoyant, which is why it was used by the U.S. Coast Guard to build a six-person life raft in 1942.

EPS, commonly known as Styrofoam, has since floated into everyday life, with people using billions of foam cups, bowls, plates, takeout containers, trays, and packing peanuts every year.

If you’ve been to Sneak Peak, perhaps you’ve noticed your own reflection in the side of a Department of Sanitation garbage truck.

This 20 cubic-yard garbage truck faced with hand-tempered mirror is The Social Mirror by artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles. The Social Mirror debuted in the grand finale of the first NYC Art Parade in 1983 and was most recently exhibited at the 2007 Armory Show.

For more than 20 years, Department of Sanitation New York City worker Nelson Molina has curated a collection…of trash. Call it a gallery, a collection, or a museum, Molina and other Sanitation workers have transformed an unused room in an Upper East Side sanitation facility, located on 99th Street between First and Second Avenues, into a showplace for found art in collected trash.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/18542856 w=500&h=281]

GrowNYC, in partnership with the NYC Department of Sanitation and NYC Department of Education, is currently accepting applications New York City public schools for their 2012-2013 Recycling Champions Program. The program “aims to empower schools to comply with, and exceed, NYC’s recycling laws, and in the process students create school wide projects and campaigns, and learn environmental leadership skills.”

Methane gas produced from decomposing waste at Fresh Kills landfill is generating revenue for the City of New York of up to $12 million each year as the site is developed into a 2,200-acre park.

With the help of advanced landfill gas collection infrastructure throughout the landfill, the New York City Department of Sanitation is actively harvesting methane, through rigorous state and federal public health and safety guidelines, from the decomposing waste buried at Fresh Kills landfill.

In June of last year we made note of a promising new partnership between the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) and Housing Works focused on collecting, reusing and recycling unwanted clothing, linens, shoes and clean rags. Less than a year after introducing the program, supporters have pronounced it a grand success.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/32527263 w=507&h=284]

A recent video on Urban Omnibus, featuring Garbage Land and Bottlemania author Elizabeth Royte, offers a glimpse behind the complex process of everyday garbage collection in New York City. Combining interview, animated graphics, and often poetic archival and present-day footage, the video tells a succinct story of one citizen’s look into the past, present, and possible future of municipal solid waste management.

Over the course of the various stages of its history, a wide range of professionals have spent time working on or thinking about the Freshkills Park site: sanitation workers, engineers, equipment manufacturers, scientists, policymakers, architects, designers, artists, philanthropists. There are countless layers of expertise to mine in understanding the site. 

re-fashioNYC  is a new, free program sponsored by the Department of Sanitation and Housing Works and focused on collecting, reusing and recylcing unwanted clothing, linens, shoes and clean rags.   Program goals include:

• reducing the 200,000 tons of textile and apparel waste each year;
• contributing to PlaNYC 2030‘s goal of diverting 75% of solid waste from landfills;
• boosting the small fraction of textile recycling by American consumers.