Sanitation: Keeping Downtown Clean for 30 Years

For the Alliance’s 30th anniversary, we’re rolling out 30 stories about 30 of our biggest accomplishments, from our daily public safety and sanitation work, to our small business outreach, to how we helped the neighborhood navigate challenges and even tragedies. Find the whole series here.

Sanitation is one of the core services we provide as a Business Improvement District, and have since our inception in 1995. Our 60-person sanitation team works tirelessly to keep Lower Manhattan clean and beautiful. The Downtown Alliance supplements the sanitation services provided by the city by servicing close to 400 public trash and recycling receptacles on a daily basis. The team also sweeps the streets and sidewalks multiple times daily to remove litter (power washing as needed), and when it snows, they’re among the first on the streets to quickly clear bus stops, fire hydrants, corners and crosswalks to create clear and accessible pathways.

Our team members have also been pioneers in recycling and composting, and take enormous pride in removing gratuitous and offensive graffiti almost as fast as tags go up.

The Downtown Alliance has deployed Bigbelly solar-powered trash compactors and accompanying recycling receptacles throughout our district for more than a decade — in fact, we were early Bigbelly adopters as part of a three-month pilot program in 2012. These innovative compactors have dramatically cut down on the number of trash bags that need to be collected and containerized for pickup by the city. To date, we operate and maintain 178 of these paired units. We also recently established a night crew, whose efforts have significantly enhanced the overall sanitation and appearance of high-traffic locations around the district.