The periodic table shows the reality of trash that floods the streets of New York City.

Waste360 Staff, Staff

September 23, 2016

1 Min Read
A Periodic Table of NYC Trash

A contributor for The New Yorker has created an interactive periodic table of recognizable NYC trash. From playbills to broken umbrellas, this periodic table shows the reality of trash that floods the streets of New York City.

The New Yorker has the details:

My fascination with urban litter began at some point in the past seven years, but I can’t be more specific. That’s the period in which I have lived in Chinatown, and in which I started noticing the neighborhood’s unique and heterogeneous trash footprint. My block, for one, is a garbage buffet. On a typical weekday morning, I might pass a fish head, a pair of adult underwear, a pair of kid underwear, a tertiary cut of meat, a broken settee, a soybean-oil tin, and drug baggies of all colors and shapes, some so small that I can’t imagine more than a grain or two of an illegal substance fitting inside. This all appears within the space of twenty or forty feet. Rats love my block. They frolic openly.

Read the full story here.

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