While the rest of the city slept in, a dozen or so bundled-up Bed-Stuy residents in their 20s and 30s spent the first Saturday of December picking up trash.
For an hour on Dec. 7, the group filled four large garbage bags with bottles, wrappers, weed bags and other litter.
“I kind of wish the city would put more effort into making sure the streets are clean, so we don’t have to,” said volunteer Jasmine Aragon, 30.
Aragon was a participant in the 20th meetup of the year for Bed-Stuy Cleanups. The group cleans streets every few weeks, announcing meetups on Instagram, and typically draws between five and 15 attendees.
Bed-Stuy Cleanups is one of several local trash clean-up initiatives. Some residents say that these grassroots efforts are proof of the city’s underinvestment in lower-income neighborhoods. Litter isn’t just a visual nuisance–it can also attract disease-carrying pests. Residents have taken matters into their own hands in the wake of rapid population growth, Department of Sanitation budget cuts and most significantly, a dearth of public litter baskets in Bed-Stuy and other low-income neighborhoods.
In 2000, Bed-Stuy was home to about 144,000 residents. By 2022, the population had grown to an estimated 166,000. Many residents feel pushed out by newcomers.
“There’s a lot of locals who have left, that have been displaced and replaced with folks that aren’t used to that kind of city living,” said resident Nijmy Alan Cadet, 38.
With a growing population comes greater pressure on existing sanitation infrastructure. Bed-Stuy ranks third in Brooklyn for the number of 311 calls about overflowing litter baskets, surpassed only by tourist-heavy Williamsburg and commercial Downtown Brooklyn.
Department of Sanitation budget cuts may have exacerbated the issue. In 2023, the city spent about $20 million less on collection and street cleaning in Brooklyn than the previous year, and the 2024 budget saw further cuts, though Joshua Goodman, a Department of Sanitation spokesman, said that these cuts did not correspond to a drop in service. Additionally, litter basket service relies on annual one-time funding, making it vulnerable to mayoral cuts.
In advance of the city’s executive budget hearing, the City Council urged Mayor Adams to restore previously cut funding for the Sanitation Department, as well as argued for baseline funding for things like litter basket service. “Mayor Adams’ administration should commit to consistently funding the vital services, rather than cutting them and requiring that they be negotiated each year,” said the City Council in a statement.
However, Goodman, the Sanitation spokesman, noted that funding for litter basket service has been at “historic highs” since 2022.
It’s likely that “trash cans are not being equitably distributed,” said Nadav Sprague, a doctoral candidate in epidemiology at Columbia University.
Sprauge co-authored a study about the availability of litter baskets in New York City. He said the study was inspired by his time living in Bed-Stuy, where he noticed a disparity in the number of litter baskets. It found that areas with higher median incomes had a higher prevalence of litter baskets than poorer neighborhoods.
For example, Park Slope, a comparably residential but wealthier neighborhood, has 30% fewer residents than Bed-Stuy, but only 2% fewer litter baskets, according to Department of Sanitation data. However, Goodman, the Sanitation spokesman, noted that they “only place litter baskets in areas with high-pedestrian traffic,” and that a more residential area would naturally have fewer trash cans as a result of lower foot traffic.
When the study adjusted for spatial autocorrelation, or the idea that spaces that are close to each other are more similar than places that are farther apart, the disparity disappeared, but Sprague says that doesn’t mean the disparity doesn’t exist.
“Things like redlining or other discriminatory housing policies have forced neighborhoods to be close to other neighborhoods that are similar, either racially or socioeconomically, so adjusting for spatial autocorrelation is adjusting for these systemic forces,” Sprague said. “It’s not that simple, because there still might be socioeconomic disparities for litter bins and because even though it’s based on spatial dependencies, there are larger systems at play that potentially created those disparities.”
Sprague said these disparities have impacts beyond rats and pests.
“It’s really important to address” disparities, said Sprague. Street litter “might prevent people from going outside and going on walks,” and “that has a really big health impact on them.”
Residents have also noticed the disparity.
“There’s not enough infrastructure, for sure,” said Cory Choy, who’s lived in Bed-Stuy since 2007. In 2020, Choy created a form for neighbors to compile a list of street corners in need of litter baskets, which he shared with the community board and city council members, in addition to making formal requests for more litter baskets through the city.
Choy said some residents feel that “we’re just tired of being disrespected by the city which is supposedly supposed to provide equal services to the neighborhoods.”
He said things got a little better after this campaign, with 10 to 20 flimsy wire bins switched out for sturdier metal versions and “a few” additional bins added.
The push for more public trash cans continues. Jennifer Garfield is the most recent advocate, launching a petition in 2024 for more trash cans in Herbert Von King Park.
“There’s not enough trash cans; they’re not big enough; they’re not getting cleaned out,” Garfield said. “So it just gets dirty very fast.”
Clarification: An earlier version of this story did not include that the drop in Sanitation funding did not correspond to a drop in service, that funding for litter basket service has been high, and that a disparity in litter basket distribution was not found when Sprague’s study adjusted for spatial autocorrelation.
