Littering/Sweeping-Out/Throwing-Out

Littering, sweeping, throwing, or casting any material such as ashes, garbage, paper, dust or other refuse or rubbish into or upon any street or public place, vacant lot, air shaft, area way, backyard, court, or alley is illegal.

Throwing refuse out of windows (i.e., buildings or vehicles) is also a violation. In addition, no person may allow anyone under his/her control (agent or employee) to commit a littering, sweep-out, or throw-out violation.

Merchants must put all sweepings into suitable garbage receptacles for pickup by a private carter.

Residential units must put sweepings into suitable garbage receptacles for pick up by the DSNY.

Sanitation litter baskets may not be used for this purpose.

(Note: When using a “blower,” grass, leaves, litter, etc., must be blown into a pile and properly disposed of with other sweepings.)

§16-118(1) FINE: $100-$450 – 1st Offense
$250-$450 – 2nd Offense within 12 months
$350-$450 – 3rd & Subsequent Offenses within 12 months

Boy I would love to know how many of these tickets are written citywide.

Littering

Personal

First, you have to get that person to hand over an ID, most likely they’re not going to give it up, so what do you do? How about they just walk away? How about if the don’t know English and just walk away?

You have to get Sanitation Police or NYPD to come and order them to hand their ID to you, so you can write the summons.

So you can see where issuing of these summons could be difficult.

Sweeping-Out

This is a Personal, for Businesses and Home Owners.

This one you get when you or someone on your property or business sweeps their sidewalk into the street and leaves it there and makes no attempt to pickup.

This one is somewhat easier to prove, my reasoning is that you have an address/location that that you can issue summons to if the person doesn’t want to give you their ID, no NYPD or Sanitation Police needed.

The problem with this one is, you have to stay and look at them do it, because the person might just be piling litter up to make it easier for themselves to pick up.

In 17 years I only had to talk to a few places, then I would monitor, never saw it being done on duty, off duty its a different story, I have seen it being done while I was off duty.

Throwing-Out

This is for Businesses,Home Owners but could be issued to a person.

You get this one for throwing your(business or household) litter/garbage/rubbish/waste into a city owned basket.

The Enemy

With all this dirty street campaign going on right now in this city and people complaining of how filthy their streets are lets look on how they got that way.

This is one habit that a lot of New Yorker’s have that I have never quite put my arms around. Before joining DSNY I always stress to my children about throwing stuff onto the street, the only exception was gum.

I taught them to put everything into their pockets or wait until they can put it into a receptacle, except gum unless they can wrap in a safe way and not put in their pockets.

Well over the years I have seen some very disturbing stuff where it just makes me go hmmmmm…

I have seen a child show the mother a candy wrapper and ask her “What do I do with this” mothers answer pointing to the ground “Just throw it there”. Just makes me think what in the hell do people get off thinking that throwing stuff on the street makes for a good thing to teach a child.

I have seen where people have used the corner basket as a basketball hoop and attempt to shoot into the basket, with a fail, but the best ones just don’t even attempt a shot, they just throw it on the ground with the basket being at hands length or maybe a foot or two away, no effort to just put into the basket, Sad.

This habit has no age limit, no race, no gender, no area, it is done everywhere in New York.

Whats their thinking is beyond me.

DSC Liter baskets, Use the loose paper haters, Use this can

First, In my opinion, people should be made to do community service in the form of cleaning streets or dirty conditions if caught littering.

My reasoning is that a person that has money will just pay and will most likely continue this practice, which defeats the purpose of the penalty.

Making them take a day off and cleaning streets in my opinion would be a better deterrent.

Second, I also believe that the community board should be more involve or just take over the locating and coordinating of the cleaning of their districts, including the adopt a basket program.

Third, bring back the cleaning officer to all districts that need it.

The most obvious solution is don’t litter.