Press

Even on the sunniest day, a dark cloud lingers. It is the veil of exhaust and stench of garbage that hovers over northern Bushwick.

Osiris Arias and his wife, Marina, have endured it since they moved to the Brooklyn neighborhood in 1995, and it has only gotten worse, they say. The source of their problem stands a few hundred feet from their home: a waste transfer station.

Operated by Five Star Carting, the transfer station is one of 15 privately-owned facilities in the area. Nearly half of New York City’s daily mountain of trash is trucked in, sorted, and trucked out from those facilities.

When Diamond Torres was growing up in North Brooklyn four decades ago, drug dealers and prostitutes walked the streets at night and crime was endemic.

But at least she could open her window.

However bad the situation was years ago, she said, it was better than what exists now: a neighborhood ruled by the rhythms of a trash transfer station and the rumble of trucks cruising through the streets day and night.

If you were shopping at A&M Discount market in Staten Island last fall, the waste produced at the store where you bought your milk, eggs, and cat food may have contributed to Sidney Marthone losing part of his middle finger when he picked up the garbage the morning of November 10.

“I tried to empty the containers in the back of the truck,” says Marthone. “They were damaged, they slipped, and my finger got caught between the broken container and the back of the truck. It cut the end off.” More…

You might as well just toss that paper into the plastic bin at work.

The city’s already abysmal commercial recycling rate has plummeted to as low as 19%, according to a new study that will be released Friday to coincide with Earth Day.

That’s well below the national average of 34%, and 10 points lower than the city’s own average of 29% in a 2004 study, the report from the environmental coalition Transform Don’t Trash found.

Bushwick residents who live around a busy waste transfer station on Thames St. are on a mission to get the facility shut down — claiming the noxious odors and fumes are enough to make people sick.

“They’re supposed to keep the garage door closed and their trucks off the sidewalks,” said neighborhood activist Ben Weinstein. “Their trucks are only supposed to idle three minutes — instead they do it for hours. They’re not following the laws.”