What Happens To NYC’s 3.2 Million Tons Of Trash | Big Business

This is just three days of garbage, most of it coming from New York City and that claw takes it to burn it and turn it into electricity, but we're not actually in New York City, we're in Jersey once the garbage man comes and picks it up. Think no more, but there's still a long way to go after none of New York's waste is processed in the city, instead ending up as far away as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and even South Carolina, so take garbage from here to here takes thousands of hardworking trucks, trains, cranes and even barges operating non-stop to send waste across the east coast rain snow hail storm there's nothing stopping us and it all cost the city hundreds of

million

s This is

what

really

happens

to New York City's 3.2

million

tons

of

trash

a year.

The New York City Department of Sanitation sends its fleet of 2,000 garbage trucks to start collecting

trash

. 5 a.m. m., you have to stay active, some like to exercise, some don't, it's basically up to you,

what

do you do to me? don't exercise this is my workout this is my daily workout that's frank a 23 year veteran sanitation worker well you become immune to the smell you don't smell garbage you smell money checking to see how solid it is you can tell when the truck is full, Frank It heads to the unloading station on the Upper East Side by which time the sun will rise.

We are currently on 91st Street. The doors will open when the truck enters and there will be radiation detectors reading the truck. The trucks stop when weighing. station to help the city keep track of how much trash New Yorkers produce, then the handles tilt the hopper, then she will push the blade and the blade will push the material out to clean the entire truck, it's about 450 to 600

tons

per day. the tractors move the rubbish to the bins under the ground, it's kind of a dance, an fdl will clear the wall and an fpl under the bins, putting the material into bins as quickly as possible and sealing it, keeps that smell under a stamper and then the garbage mattresses are packed.

It is used as a sponge to cover any remains when we have garbage on the floor. It will take 10 to 15 minutes to load a container once the Department of Health seals it and slides it onto the dock. Responsibility then shifts to Covanta, the waste-to-energy company, which runs two marine transfer stations in the city. The containers are picked up by the crane and placed on the barge. 48 containers go on the barge. Each of these containers represents a truck that we have taken off the streets of the city. and outside the tunnels, reducing carbon emissions and reducing congestion and wear and tear on the city's infrastructure, a tugboat connects to the loaded garbage barge.

Tug Captain Jason Harris is now in charge. He gets the green light for a 9:30 a.m. departure. m., what you see. here it's called hell gate this is the upper end of the east river the tides play a big factor in the times we can transfer barges you can't go against the tide when it's at its maximum it's too strong we would actually reach a dead end stop on this boat and barge wait until you can go with him very often a barge fills up and we will have to wait two three maybe four hours before the tide comes in, it is in his favor that he sails with this heavy load safely to along one of the world's busiest waterways up the East River through New York Harbor to Staten Island three hours later the tug and barge return to the global transfer station it is an inherently dangerous operation moving heavy equipment above and then a train takes it to one of the covanta waste to energy facilities you can also get there via trucks all of manhattan's residential trash goes to waste energy facilities like this one to be burned and converted into electricity this The facility processes up to a million tons of waste annually.

Once the trucks arrive and reach the dump floor, they dump in front of one of these bays. The tractors push the trash into a huge storage pit that is 93 feet deep and 270 feet wide. long there are between eight and nine thousand tons in the garbage pit, worth between three and four days of garbage a giant claw descends on the garbage in a single blow it can pick up as much as a garbage truck carries the claw builds a wall of garbage to avoid having it avalanche towards the sloping floor also helps create more space for incoming garbage You look at garbage in a very different way since I work here, we create a lot of garbage as a population, two claws work together in tandem dumping garbage into chutes that lead to the incinerator.

Romeo is an expert giant claw operator 21 years of flying the crane there is no shortage of fuel for our boilers toy story is the first thing on everyone's mind disney was actually inspired for toy story 3 incinerator sequence in a covanta plant los incinerators burn garbage at a thousand degrees fahrenheit they take one to two hours to burn a full hopper load now we have entered the control room area of ​​the plant so this is the brain of the operation yes it is and here it is your brain he has camera views of the combustion zone how important you are to this place working properly how important am I I'm the guy I'm the guy he's in the hot seat russell monitors while the furnace heats the steam spinning this turbine and generating enough energy to power this plant and 46,000 homes in the region after everything has burned all that is left is ash and metal this magnet extracts enough metal to make 21,000 cars the leftover ashes will cover the landfills then the plant eliminates those unpleasant fumes but burning garbage causes the leftover gases to first pass through a scrubber reactor a slurry of lime cleans the acid gases and the activated carbon absorbs the pollutants then pass through a bag chamber, basically a bunch of filters, so what remains of that chimney, the components of the combustion gases, is what is in normal air, such as nitrogen, carbon dioxide, humidity.

The alternative to this would be to go to a landfill. Waste is converted into energy. We produce CO2 emissions, but in one year this process eliminates one million tons of CO2 emissions that a landfill would have produced. We generate a very small amount of methane. The methane we offset from a landfill results in a real decrease in CO2 emissions. The city hopes to continue moving forward. trash into waterways to facilities like this, it's all part of their goal to become zero waste to landfill by 2030, but it's getting harder to achieve. Only about 30 percent of New York City's waste is converted to energy, the rest ends up as harmful methane. landfills produce in places as far away as south carolina and ohio and it takes significant investment to move them each year exporting garbage costs the city around 400 million dollars so why does new york city send its garbage so far In 1881 the streets of New York City were notoriously dirty.

People were so dirty that they were getting sick, so the Department of Sanitation was established to clean the streets and the department helped clean the city, but the city quickly became no space to throw away all your trash. In the early 20th century, the city resorted to dumping trash into the ocean even though it was illegal, with up to 80 percent of the city's trash ending up in the sea. This continued until 1934, when a Supreme Court case forced the city to stop dumping into the ocean in the 1970s. Incinerators used throughout much of the 20th century. They were closed because they did not meet EPA clean air standards, so the city opened landfills in all five boroughs, including at one point the largest in the world in 1973, New York even built lower Manhattan using mounds of trash , but even that wasn't enough with nowhere else to put it, the city started shipping its waste to other states, most of the landfills in this area have been closed so the available landfills are getting further and further away.

Exporting trash is a costly practice with a large environmental footprint and puts the burden on communities far from these shiny skyscrapers. For now, New York City's only option is to continue exporting trash, but ultimately the department says the best solution is would be getting New Yorkers to waste less trash, it's like one of those things they say outside and forget about it, I think everyone should know what

happens

to what they throw away, if you know where it goes and you don't like where it goes, maybe Maybe you find ways to recycle things. I would never take anything home because my wife wouldn't allow it, but there will be a butt there.

If I see something that's Star Wars, I'll look for it and make it, if it's good, I'll take it home.