City Council looks to knock out illegal clothing bins
Members of the New York City Council’s Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management met at Brooklyn Borough Hall on Friday, September 19 to discuss a 1,200 percent spike in the presence of illegal clothing bins, which they say are now plaguing the five boroughs, and an important bill they say will combat the problem.
“First, I would like to say that there is a place in the city for clothing collection bins,” said City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito before discussing Introduction 409, a bill that would regulate the placement of publicly accessible clothing collection bins. “They serve several important functions and they divert thousands of tons of used clothing from our waste stream that would otherwise end up in landfills.”
However, she said, “That does not give the owners of these bins the right to place them on public property where they often obstruct pedestrian traffic, are poorly maintained, and often become targets for graffiti and filled with trash.”