I have a little game I play when I’m out walking. I count the empty pizza boxes in everyone’s cardboard-recycling tubs. But what happens when folks aren’t as circumspect about their trash? In New York City, pizza litter and rats run rampant…
My pizza box game is not only a great boredom diffuser. It’s also an education in how the neighbours live. And how well off they are. More boxes means they have more cash in their food budgets than some of us. It also means they bow to convenience when it comes to obtaining sustenance…
Nevertheless…
This post will focus specifically on New York City. Newhaven, Connecticut has officially been designated been called the Pizza Capital of America by the US Congress. But it’s nowhere near as big a pizza market as NYC., which boasts an estimated 1,800 pizza parlours.
But with the good comes the bad. The fluffy white cloud’s inevitable sooty lining. In the case of pizza, it’s millions of discarded cardboard boxes a year.
The issue
… It’s simply that those big, flat, awkward boxes just don’t fit efficiently into the standard round barrel-style waste baskets that dot the streets. And many of the empties end up literally on the streets. Not only that, but pizza boxes almost always contain fragments of crusts, smears of sauce or cheese, and residues of toppings. That’s a recipe for a rodent buffet. And rodents – particularly large, nasty rats – have become a real problem in the City That Never Sleeps…
Enter the PBRI
That’s the new Pizza Box recycling Initiative. It’s placing big, square, green plastic collection ‘columns’ in areas where folks traditionally consume pizza outside the home.
One such locale is a park adjacent to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, favoured by picnickers. Alas, the al fresco diners’ debris has caused the rat population there to soar. Which is why the park was chosen as the location for a pilot project, to be evaluated right after Labour Day. If it’s deemed successful, the Central Park Conservancy will decide whether to deploy more of the $1,500 bins over a wider area.
My take
There are so many things that make NYC unique. I’d agree their rat problem – which they insist can be chalked up to an abundance of discarded Pizza boxes – has a place on the list.
I wonder if, once the rats are vanquished, NYC’s brain trust might not turn its powers and talents to the even more aggravating pidgeon problem. Their solution – if appropriate – could be adopted by other cities to great advantage…
~ Maggie J.