Latest news with #DSNY
New York Post
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
NYC's sanitation department uses Coldplay jumbotron scandal in PSA reminding people not to dump trash: ‘Cameras are everywhere'
Don't get caught on camera looking like a garbage person! The city's sanitation department warned folks Friday not to get busted in footage dumping trash illegally in a cheeky nod to a viral story about a two-timing tech tycoon caught allegedly having an affair on a 'kiss cam' at a Coldplay concert. 'Cameras are EVERYWHERE! Don't get caught doing something you *maybe* shouldn't be doing,' the SDNY post declared in the Facebook post. The DSNY posted an announcement poking fun of two-timing CEO Andy Byron and his co-worker mistress Kristin Cabot. 'Thinking about doing something naughty, like dumping trash in the City? We've got video cameras all over. We WILL catch you — and you will pay the price!' The post features an image of Astronomer CEO Andy Byron cuddling his head-of-HR mistress, Kristin Cabot, in embarrassing jumbotron footage — which exposed the alleged cheaters at the concert near Boston Wednesday night. Next to it, the DNSY posted images of several people captured in surveillance camera footage apparently dumping trash illegally. Observers got a kick out of the post, with one user proclaiming, 'That's a criminal burn, brought to you by DSNY,' with a crying-laughing emoji. Byron and Cabot scrambled to hide their faces when they were broadcast on a the kiss cam canoodling at Gillette Stadium during the rock show Wednesday night. Byron and Cabot scrambled to hide their faces when they appeared on a 'kiss cam' at the concert. Grace Springer via Storyful 'Oh, what?' lead singer Chris Martin said, clearly confused. 'Either they're having an affair or they're just very shy.' It wasn't immediately clear if the people captured dumping trash faced any consequences. A rep for the DSNY didn't return a request for comment Friday.
San Francisco Chronicle
14-07-2025
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Destiny Media: Fiscal Q3 Earnings Snapshot
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — Destiny Media Technologies Inc. (DSNY) on Monday reported a loss of $72,000 in its fiscal third quarter. The Vancouver, British Columbia-based company said it had a loss of 1 cent per share. The distributor of secured pre-release music and video posted revenue of $1.1 million in the period.
Fast Company
07-07-2025
- General
- Fast Company
New York's War on Rats has a new secret weapon: the big gray bin
In late June, I was standing at an intersection in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem, at 5 a.m., surveying a row of hulking gray bins that lined the curb. Next to me, Joshua Goodman, the deputy commissioner for Public Affairs & Customer Experience at DSNY, admired his team's handiwork. 'We want it to be iconic, but we also kind of want it to blend in and disappear,' Goodman said of the bin. 'Eventually we want you to walk down the street and not notice that it's here.' As the sun rose, and sleepy commuters passed by us, he explained that while these new bins are novel today, the hope is they become just another part of the streetscape. This morning, however, the European-style bins are hard to miss. Standing 3-feet wide and 5-feet tall with gently curved lids, these stationary on-street containers, officially named Empire Bins, are parked in front of large apartment buildings in Manhattan's Community Board 9. They are the latest initiative from New York City to fight rats and keep the streets clean, after the city commissioned a $4 million McKinsey study that concluded that the future of trash management is cans and bins. Since the study, restaurants and residential buildings between one and nine units have had to dispose of their waste in city-sanctioned trash cans (55 gallons or less, with a secure lid), in lieu of the heaping mounds of black trash bags that used to line the streets. Then, this past April, the city unveiled the Empire Bins as the next phase of its experiment in corralling waste. These sturdy, solid receptacles replace the mountains of flimsy trash bags that rodents easily shred in order to access the nightly all-you-can-eat buffets that we set out for them. While a handful of bins debuted in a smaller 10-block area last fall, they are now in wider use. The city will evaluate the next phase of containerization after the Harlem pilot study is complete, but for now, 1,100 are spread across the pilot area. The kitchen is now closed in Manhattan's Community Board 9, the city's first neighborhood to be fully containerized. Designing the Empire Bin Framing the seemingly obvious behavior of putting trash into cans as an innovation is the butt of jokes, but for a city that generates over 14 million tons of waste a year—and stuffs smelly, leaky, flimsy trash bags in every available space it can—execution is a challenge logistically, technically, and behaviorally. Enter design. 'Many people are sort of surprised that trash requires an aesthetic,' Goodman tells me. The bins are made by the Spanish company called Conteneur —which has a $7 million, 10-year contract with the city to provide up to 1,500 bins—and are slightly modified versions of their Oval 3000 model, which are found in cities like Barcelona. While the physical design is mostly off the shelf, the experience around them is New York specific. First off, the bins are gray with gray lids to match the color of the smaller rolling bins required for buildings with nine or fewer units. They are simply labeled 'Trash' and feature icons of a metal garbage bin and bundled plastic bag, along with a DSNY logo on the corner. 'Very straightforward iconography, just simple-to-understand terms,' Goodman explains. Some Empire Bins are also installed at schools in the neighborhood for recycling and compost in addition to trash, and their lids are color coded to indicate what goes inside: blue for glass, green for paper, brown for compost—just like residential bins. Second, the Empire Bins are assigned to specific addresses instead of being for whole neighborhood communal use like they are in most European cities. While the city has long known the weight of its waste, it didn't know the volume until it conducted a 70,000 block study as part of the containerization effort. Through this, DSNY concluded that a one-size-fits-all container would not work for neighborhoods because of the varying density. A block might contain any mixture of large and small residential buildings; instead, it took a building-by-building approach. DSNY mandated that buildings over 31 units receive an Empire Bin and gave buildings between 10 and 30 units the option to use the Empire Bin or individual rolling bins. Right now, Empire Bins occupy about 4% of the neighborhood's curbside parking. 'We don't want there to be too little or too much bin space,' Goodman says. 'Too much bin space is not an efficient use of our curb line, and obviously not enough is bad for sort of self-evident reasons.' And finally, each Empire Bin is outfitted with a battery-powered lock; the person or people responsible for trash at the building receive key cards to access them. There's no limit to how many key cars a building can receive. Conteneur advised the city to keep the cards plain, but Goodman felt like they needed a special graphic treatment so 'Empire Bin' and a photograph of the receptacles is printed on each green-and-white card. 'They said, 'You don't want it to become a collector's item.' And I said, 'No, I want it to become a collector's item,' he explains. 'The key card has to be cool. People have to want this. They have to be excited to get it.' In order to keep the bins in the exact same spot, DSNY installed tiny pyramids onto the pavement that hold them in place and prevent them from getting pushed around. Each bin weighs about 300 pounds empty, so a lot of strength is required to dislodge them. Additionally, DSNY, in collaboration with the Department of Transportation, installed flex posts around the bins to ensure there's enough clearance for the collection trucks' mechanical arm to grab them. Residents take their trash out like normal. But supers bag up the trash and toss them into the bins instead of leaving it on the curb for pick-up. They can access the bin 24/7 and don't have to wait until a specific time to use them. This way, there's no need for the intermediate steps of bagging trash and holding it in a trash room until pick-up then bringing everything to the curb. 'It has eliminated the building manager frustration around having to be here till 8 p.m. to put the trash out,' Goodman says. An Automated Truck for the Heavy Lifting Around 5:45 a.m., a new DSNY truck rumbled up the hill. To service the Empire Bins, DSNY had to build 16 custom side-loading collection trucks. The models in use in Europe don't meet the emissions requirements in New York, so DSNY Frankensteined their bodies onto the same model of chassis that the fleet currently uses. One of the two workers hopped out of the cab then flashed his universal access key card over the lock to peek inside to see if the bins had anything inside them. The first was empty, but the second had a few bags in it. He returned to the truck and hit a button on its side, which awoke a large, automated mechanical arm. It lowered itself around the bin, pinched its sides, then hoisted it 20 feet in the air before flipping it upside down to empty its contents. Then, the arm precisely lowers the bin back to its exact resting place. The entire process is automated, but there are cameras inside the cab that lets the driver keep an extra set of eyes on the mechanical arm for safety and a joystick just in case they need to operate it manually. Instead of heaving heavy, dirty bags into the back of a truck, workers essentially just press a button. It's a shift that helps reduce the tremendous physical strain on the job and risk of illness, especially leptospirosis, a bacterial infection that is spread through rodent urine. It's curable, but often goes undiagnosed, which can lead to complications. 'There are two kinds of New Yorkers who get leptospirosis: sanitation workers and dogs,' Goodman says. 'We have maybe six cases a year from handling trash bags that a rat has urinated on, and now they're not touching the bags.' The entire acrobatic sequence took less than 30 seconds. It reminded me of the Snow Plow Ballet, a 2003 performance by Mierle Laderman Ukeles, DSNY's first resident artist, of snow plows choreographed into a dance. The arm's graceful rise was not unlike a plié and relevé. Then the truck was onto the next set of bins—sometimes the bins are sited individually and sometimes in sequence—for an encore performance, and soon drove onto the next block. From Harlem to the Five Boroughs? If the Harlem pilot is successful, the Empire Bins may come to the rest of the city, though DSNY has to complete its study before the city decides. For now Goodman and his team will be gathering feedback and studying how the bins work in situ from residents as well as sanitation workers. Some early takeaways have emerged: DSNY noticed that drivers sometimes park over the flex posts, so it is considering installing bollards between them and the bins to ensure there's enough clearance for the mechanical arm. Meanwhile, some supers who manage multiple buildings have asked for a key card that can work on multiple bins; DSNY has worked with property owners to get authorization. 'We want this to be really simple,' Goodman says. Then there is the challenge of using the bins as the city intends. I spotted a paper bag of recycling and a couple grocery store-size bags of trash in front of a row of three Empire Bins. DSNY has added a 'No Dumping' sticker to prevent this. 'My hope is that long-term that's not necessary and that people come to understand what the bin is,' Goodman says. As Goodman and I wrapped up our tour, we spotted DSNY's Manhattan Borough Chief Daton Lewis trailing the pick-up, too. He was excited about the new method of trash collection. 'It's just amazing,' Chief Lewis told us, mentioning that a colleague who has served in DSNY for 20 years told him that the Empire Bins came 19 years too late. 'It's like a kid in the candy store for me.' So far, DSNY's containerization efforts seem to be working. In the first half of 2025, citywide rat sightings decreased 18.4% compared to the same time period in 2024. Still, the vocal pro-car faction has chimed in; the New York Post accused the bins of ' abducting ' parking spaces. Meanwhile, some advocates are calling for more on-street bins arguing that the fleets of rolling bins for smaller buildings are crowding sidewalk space. While Mayor Adams has said that the tradeoff of less parking is a 'small price to pay' for cleaner streets, it remains to be seen if the future political climate will be as open to the shift. A couple days after my trek to Harlem, I attended a screening of The Maintenance Artist, a documentary about Mierle Laderman Ukeles, that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival this June. A feminist artist who explored the cultural associations with maintenance and care, Ukeles, wanted more citizens to value the systems and labor that keep a city running. 'I believe that the design of garbage-recycling facilities, landfills, water treatment plants, rivers should become the great public design of our age,' she said in an interview that appeared in the film. 'They will be utterly ambitious, our civic cathedrals.' Since then, the city has commissioned a handful of civic cathedrals to sanitation: There's the salt shed on Spring Street that resembles a concrete crystal and the rotund silver digester eggs that define the Greenpoint skyline and are occasionally open to the public on architecture tours that always sell out. The newest entries to the canon, I'd argue, are the Empire Bins. Part of Ukeles's ambition was to help people realize that keeping our cities clean is a shared responsibility. 'After the revolution, who's going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?' she wrote in her 1969 manifesto. The answer should be all of us, in some capacity. Today, that means being receptive to the redistribution of curb space for waste collection. 'I don't think we were asked if we wanted to live with 24 million pounds of trash in the street,' Goodman says. 'And the idea that we can change it is, I think, compelling.' The super-early-rate deadline for Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies Awards is Friday, July 25, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.
New York Post
13-06-2025
- General
- New York Post
This is how NYC crushes gnawed apple cores and greasy pizza boxes into ‘black gold'
This is where trash turns into treasure. Millions of disgusting, leaking bags of rotting food collected from New York City streets every week are digested and spat back out as 'black gold' as part of the city's fast-growing compost initiative. The arduous process sees the apple cores, spoiled spinach bunches and greasy boxes squeezed, cooked and pummeled for months — all while being fiercely protected from hungry birds — until they are transformed into a fine, nutrient-rich dust that is returned to New Yorkers for their very own gardens. 9 Millions of pounds of food scraps, landscaping materials and food-soiled items are turned into compost every week at the Staten Island facility. Michael McWeeney The Post was offered on Thursday an up-close and personal view of how the Staten Island facility produces what it calls 'black gold' — which has been collected in record-breaking troves week after week since composting mandates went into effect in April. Last week, more than 5.4 million pounds of scraps, food-soiled paper and yard waste — equal in weight to 12 Statues of Liberty — were collected across the five boroughs. The surging collection rate is almost overwhelming for the Staten Island facility, which DSNY Assistant Commissioner Jennifer McDonnell said is fast approaching its compost capacity — which is a good problem to have. 'When you think about how much food waste there is all across the city, it would be very difficult to put ten more of these [facilities] so we have to have many diverse resources for a city as large as ours,' said O'Donnell, adding that the DSNY would partner with other facilities in the region to manage the load if it became too much. 9 It takes about three months for the materials to be turned into compost. Michael McWeeney 'It all depends on how much people participate … We always manage no matter what it is.' The Staten Island facility is one of two in the Big Apple, but handles the bulk of the city's spoiled scraps. After being plucked from curbside pick-up, the materials are piled into a massive shed, which laborers rifle through to remove any non-compostable trash that slipped through. Black bags — which make it nearly impossible for laborers to tell what's inside — are the bane of the DSNY's work and are swiftly ripped open. 'Sometimes we get crazy things like refrigerators. We think that happens sometimes when the trunk that was used to collect recycling didn't get everything out and sometimes it ends up coming out here instead, which is not great, but it happens,' said O'Donnell. 'And I understand this, but we've gotten entire planters because people say, 'Oh, I want to compost my plant,' but they don't actually take it out of the pot,' she continued. 9 The materials are kept in a storage shed before piled thrown into the shredder, which rips bags open, and screener, which separates compost from garbage. Michael McWeeney 9 'We always manage no matter what it is,' DSNY Assistant Commissioner, Jennifer McDonnell, said about the facility nearly reaching compost capacity. Michael McWeeney 'You never really know it's New York City, right?' A select few items that are clearly compostable — often spotted thanks to clear plastic bags — are taken to 'The Tiger,' a massive machine that squeezes the vile liquids out of the materials. Everything else is taken through a duo of machines, aptly named the 'shredder' and 'screener.' The massive conveyor belt with knives rips open remaining plastic bags and separates them from the materials, before pushing them through the screener, which is able to discern compost from garbage based on its density. All the compost taken from The Tiger, the shredder and the screener is next laid out in long, narrow rows on the grounds of the Staten Island facility, where they will spend weeks 'cooking' in the sun. 9 DSNY staff is constantly fending off birds and other animals who want to munch on the pre-compost materials. Michael McWeeney This process is to promote the growth of bacteria that consume the material, creating methane and carbon dioxide, which is key for transforming the scraps into compost, while also killing off unwanted pathogens. A fan is almost constantly churning beneath the piles to regulate the temperature, while a tarp above keeps out the elements — and the hungry birds that are looking to snack on the rescued trash. Landscaping materials like downed trees and old plants go through a similar process nearby, where they are whittled down to mulch, explained O'Donnell. Every once in a while, the piles need to be watered — otherwise, they could spontaneously combust. 9 Fans help regulate the temperature of the compost while its being 'cooked.' Michael McWeeney 9 The finished result is a sweet-smelling dirt that can be returned to New Yorkers for use in their own gardens. Michael McWeeney 'It can. It has. It was a while ago, but we haven't forgotten about it!' said O'Donnell. During these crucial few weeks, the DSNY is battling Staten Island's wildlife, which have been prowling the grounds for dinner since the grounds were a landfill. A constant blast of bird calls is echoed on speakers throughout the 33 acres, an original mix of five 'predators' overlaid on one another meant to keep the birds away. The agency has also scattered fake dead seagulls across the property to show their friends what might happen if they try to munch on the future 'black gold.' It's not just that the DSNY doesn't want the compost to be eaten, but the birds' excrement and bacteria would jeopardize the safety of the material, explained the compost facility's project manager, Mike LeBlanc. 9 Ground compost is being loaded onto a conveyor belt to be bagged at The Staten Island Compost Facility. Michael McWeeney 9 More than 2.1 million bag of compost have been doled out to New Yorkers for free since January. Michael McWeeney The measures seem to be working — there have been no reports of a bird, coyote or other animals getting sucked up into any of the compost machines. 'I haven't seen one yet. The good news is that if they do, they are organic,' said LeBlanc. At the end of the 'cooking' time, the landscaping mulch and food-soiled materials are put through the 'Star Screen,' which pummels the now-sweet-smelling combination into a fine dust that looks like healthy dirt. Much of the compost is doled out to parks and schools across the five boroughs, and plenty is sold off to contractors, but DSNY keeps a hefty amount in stock at all times to give back to New Yorkers at its weekly GiveBack sites — completely free of charge. Big Apple residents have claimed more than 2.1 million pounds of compost since January. All in all, it takes about three months for kitchen scraps to be collected at curbside pickup and returned in dirt form.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
War on rats gets ugly as hundreds of ‘eyesore' Empire Bins gobble up parking spaces in Harlem
These drivers are in for rat-ical change. West Harlem has become the first neighborhood in the United States to have all of its trash containerized in order to squash uptown rats' curbside trash feasts, City Hall officials said Monday – but the hundreds of UFO-like 'Empire Bins' are now permanently taking some coveted parking spots, The Post has learned. The latest cohort of European-style bins, which are mandatory for all residential properties with more than 30 units, were installed over the weekend — and have gobbled up about 4% of parking spaces in the neighborhood overnight, a city sanitation department rep told The Post. 'It takes up parking spots that were already hard to find,' said Harlem resident Erica Lamont, who claims she circled the blocks of Broadway and West 149th Street for a half-hour on Tuesday morning. 'The bins are the size of small cars and when you put two and three on a residential street, you are ultimately forcing people to force blocks away,' Lamont, 46, said. 'It's not placed in no standing or truck loading zones – they are placed in the few actual parking spots that residents could get,' said Michelle R., a 40-year-old dog sitter in the neighborhood. 'I like the garbage cans, but I feel bad for the people that normally park their cars there.' Other locals, like Harlem resident David Jones, simply blasted the bizarre look of the gargantuan containers. 'It's an eyesore,' said Jones, 40. 'It's right there in front of your face. I'm neutral. If it does the job then let's applaud it — If it doesn't, then let's get rid of them and come up with something else.' Some locals previously told The Post the massive receptacles clash with the neighborhood's aesthetic, even though they may be needed to scare away rats. The pilot program, which spans Manhattan's Community Board 9, includes 1,100 on-street containers for about 29,000 residents living in properties with over 30 units, as well as about half of properties with 10 to 30 units that opted to use the bins. The locked bins are accessible to building staff and waste managers via 'access cards,' and have been serviced by automated side-loading trucks since Monday. 'Rat sightings in NYC are down six months in a row,' a DSNY rep told The Post. 'This is the exact same period that residential bin requirements have been in effect. Containerization WORKS, and there is no reason that other cities can have it and New York can't.' But while citywide rat sightings are down, Manhattan's Community Board 9 has seen a 7.8% jump in rat sightings compared to this time last year, according to a Post analysis of 311 data. Still, City Hall hopes the new bins will end the curbside rat buffet fueled by garbage bags lingering on residential streets — which uptown residents say have made it nearly impossible to walk on some streets at night. 'When there's trash on the sidewalk, there's rats—plain and simple. And yet for years, City Hall acted like trash cans were some sort of sci-fi/fantasy invention,' said Council Member Shaun Abreu, Chair of the Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management. 'Now with full containerization in West Harlem and Morningside Heights, we've got clean bins, no more sidewalk piles, and fewer rats. We fought like hell to make this happen, and now we're proving it works.' Harlem resident Rick M. said he hopes the new containers are effective as residents have historically had to move quickly past piles of street side trash 'because you don't know what may run out. 'I've seen rats run from one big pile to another so it's nice to not have to walk by piles of trash,' the 30-year-old said. 'The rat problem was so bad here that humans couldn't be living here — they'd be attacking you right here,' lifelong Harlem resident Shanice Day told The Post at Morningside Avenue and 124th Street. Day, 39, recalls rats as big as cats 'like Master Splinter rats from Ninja Turtles' that would chew wires off people's cars — and attributes the Empire Bins to a rapid decrease in rodent sightings. 'What I can honestly say is we are almost rat free,' she added. 'If people are upset about the bins they're crazy, because they are a big help.' But Harlem resident Wise Grant, 64, warns the containers are only as effective as those who use them. 'It slows them down but it's not a way to get rid of them,' the retired voting machine technician said. 'It's up to the individual people. People throw food on the floor and it feeds them.' 'That's what people do on the streets. They don't care … They have to care about where they live.'
