For the fourth year in a row, the Sanitation Foundation, the official nonprofit partner of NYC Department of Sanitation (DSNY), in conjunction with the New York Yankees and the Office of the Bronx Borough President, is hosting its annual Bronx Summer Clean-up Series.

 

To incentivize volunteers to clean up their local neighborhoods, a top prize at each event for those who collect the most pounds of trash is a VIP experience at Yankee Stadium. Other prizes for clean-up efforts include general admission tickets to Yankees games.

 

This year’s clean-up in Bedford Park, held on July 19, was a lively affair. Eagle-eyed volunteers seemed committed to the task as they prowled around Harris Field equipped with pick sticks, green trash bags, and gloves courtesy of the Sanitation Foundation, scouring the area for unsightly trash. Filled trash bags were later disposed on street corners to be collected by NYC Department of Sanitation, which works closely with the Sanitation Foundation to maintain the City’s cleanliness.

 

Speaking to Norwood News on the day, Pam Harris, president of the Sanitation Foundation, said, “Everybody has a part to play in keeping the city clean, and so these clean-ups are a way for people to get involved, because it’s just two hours. She added, “And I have to say that after you finish a clean-up, you have [figuratively] “trash goggles” on; you will forever see New York City differently. You will forever pick up something from the street and put it in the garbage… It changes your perspective of New York City.”

Unsightly piles and scatterings of trash often seen across Bronx parks and streets have long been an eyesore for Bronx residents, many of whom have shared their frustration with the problem in the past. This is especially true after big holidays like the Fourth of July, but piles of trash have also long been seen regularly along Webster Avenue by Woodlawn Cemetery and between parked vehicles and the walls of Reservoir Oval in nearby Norwood. While nobody begrudges anyone a good time, what annoys most residents is when people litter or don’t clean up after themselves.

 

Posting a photo of an abandoned bunch of balloons seemingly stuck in a tree on the Facebook group, Future of Mosholu Parkland (FOMP), FOMP executive director Elizabeth Quaranta recently said, “Balloon[s] don’t belong up on a tree and actually, balloons don’t belong anywhere. They are made out of plastic. They’re no good for the environment and I’ve picked up thousands of them off the ground when they come down.”

 

She added, “They’re also not good for wildlife. I don’t understand why people need to celebrate with balloons. Save your money and get paper fans. Keep the balloons out of your life.” Norwood News Editor Síle Moloney recently joined Quaranta in a separate clean-up effort along Mosholu Parkway in Bedford Park on July 17, and picked up many tiny pieces of plastic, ballon remnants, broken glass, and other potentially dangerous and hazardous items left behind by park goers.

Earlier trash pick-up times by DSNY, rat academy training sessions for residents, and new rules around trash management, compost disposal and trash bins for local businesses have all helped somewhat with street cleanliness and curbing rat sightings, but park trash containers often still seem to be overflowing, especially at the weekends, creating a depressing atmosphere.

 

Back at Bedford Park, we asked Harris about the logistics of the clean-up efforts. “We want to keep everybody super, super safe,” she said. “So, we come, we scout this route beforehand. Logistically, we make sure that there’s a big meeting place that’s nice and safe and shady. We try to be near public transportation so there’s a 4 train and a B train there. We carefully plot out the routes to make sure that they’re safe, they’re dirty, they need help, and we look at how many people sign up.”

 

She continued, “So, if we have 125 people sign up, we’ll pick three or four routes. We’ll scout them before we walk the routes, and make sure that it’ll take enough time. On this route, because it’s on a Friday, we have a lot of kids, a lot of camps, a lot of youth programs, and we staff up because we want to make sure those kids are as safe as possible.”

Other staff members and volunteers with the Sanitation Foundation have their own roles to play, aside from accompanying and guiding youth groups along their clean-up routes. This includes Johari James, who works closely with the youth groups to get them involved in their local communities and who has been participating in the annual clean-up events for three years, including in Brooklyn.

 

“Through doing the mentorship with youth, and just doing community activities and engagement, I got connected with the Sanitation Foundation and from there, started working with them in the volunteer program,” James said. “[It] escalated into being in clean-ups with them, I got work in the schools doing waste audits, litter clean-ups, and a lot of meetings in public schools.”

James said part of the key to getting youth involved was about incentivizing them, and not just with free Yankee Stadium tickets. “If you’ve got a couple of dollars, if you have a barbecue, if you have Yankee tickets, if you have something to offer the young people as a reward, to show them that doing what they’re supposed to be doing is a good thing…” he said before trailing off.

 

Aside from the incentivization for the clean-up, Bronx residents, and some former Bronx residents, find that they enjoy giving back to the community that raised and housed them. This is true of Kateri Gonzalez, who now lives in New Jersey with her husband and kids, and who was accompanied by her husband and some of her kids on the day. She said she was raised in The Bronx.

“This is my home,” she said. “I was born and raised in New York City. I was born in Mount Sinai, and I grew up a diehard Yankee fan.” Of the many benefits she sees in participating in clean-up events, she said, “It’s two things: you’re having a family activity, you’re teaching your kids how to give back, and then you’re also giving back to the community, helping people out, and then thirdly, you’re winning because you’re getting an incentive.”

 

Others feel the same way, like Julio Leonor, a Bronx resident, and Eduardo Rosa, a Bedford Park resident and student at Lehman College, who are veterans of the annual clean-up series.

Leonor has been volunteering for three years now, after finding out about the clean-up series via email. He said they have taken him to several different Bronx neighborhoods to carry out the work. “I was [living] here [in 1976],” he said. “I moved to the Yankee Stadium area, and then I moved around but it’s always… Bronx is always home.”

 

Once the two hours were up, volunteers were able to exchange their gloves for a Yankees game ticket, which also doubled as a voucher for a free, sweet treat from Mr. Softee’s ice cream truck that was parked on a nearby street.

According to Harris, the Sanitation Foundation also has other programs and initiatives in which people can get involved, including youth education, a two- month program called “Trash Academy,” which teaches individuals about a healthier and cleaner New York City, “Adopt Your Spot NYC,” a program which gives participants a starter kit to keep. It might be a tree bed, a catch basin or something else to work on regularly to enhance and beautify the City.

 

Meanwhile, new European-style, on-street containers which will be around four cubic yards long, holding the equivalent of 28 large bags of trash are due to be rolled out across the City in 2025, DSNY officials said. The containers will be lifted by a fleet of automated side-loading trucks, with the aim of reducing street trash left unattended for several hours. DSNY unveiled one of the new trucks in February, the first of its kind in North America.

Data in April showed the City’s so-called “Trash Revolution” is working, with rat sightings reported to 311 declining in 11 of the 12 months year over year since the revolution began, according to DSNY. The total decrease across the covered period was 6.4%, and 14.3% in the City’s Rat Mitigation Zones. DSNY manages 44 million pounds of trash per day in New York City, officials said.

 

On May 23, New York City Council passed a new law that gives DSNY the authority to target the worst repeat violators of rules regulating the cleanliness of public space outside commercial properties. NYC Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at the time, “New Yorkers are demanding clean streets, and the Adams Administration is delivering – yet a few chronic bad actors have kept our streets dirty and the rats well fed. A small number of commercial property owners have brazenly broken the basic cleanliness rules over and over again with impunity, including three dozen locations that were fined FIFTY OR MORE TIMES in 2023.”

 

The Sanitation Foundation said, in addition to its other partners, it was also thankful for the support of NYC Service and Amazon with its summer clean-up efforts. The Bedford Park event was the fourth Bronx clean-up event of the ongoing boroughwide summer series, with Mott Haven’s clean-up having taken place the week before. The first clean-up event took place on June 22 and the Yankee Stadium area clean-up takes place on Aug. 2. Community members and others interested in participating can sign up on the website, sanitationfoundation.org.

 

Nearly all the Bedford Park day’s participants expressed a desire to see change and to see The Bronx cleaner and healthier. This was especially since, as James alleged, The Bronx accumulates the most trash.

“In all of the boroughs, quality of life has plummeted,” she said. “This is like a band aid in a sense, but it’s a band aid that sends a message that people can say, ‘Hey! Listen, I can take an hour out of my day; I can clean my block.’ Now, once it’s clean, what do we do after that?”

 

*Síle Moloney contributed to this story.