At the corner of Bedford and Lorimer in Greenpoint/Northside you’ll find what are called CitiBins. Large container type garbage bins where trash from the park is stored to be picked up by sanitation without the trash sitting outside in big black bags for hours. We’ve all been there. The smell, the rats and the filth have a way of being part of our daily lives. It’s not often we get excited about garbage, but the heavy use in McCarren Park necessitated a strategy for garbage. So instead of having big black bags hanging around on the ground for hours and even days, we have to give credit to the councilman who is quick to use partnerships to get things done that make sense in the community. With some serious funding through Councilman Restler, in partnership with the North Brooklyn Park Alliance and the Parks Department, one of the most common sense amenities for parks we have seen in a while has come to pass. Leave it to Greenpoint to lead the way.
For generations on end, people using parks have been asking for more trash cans. ON weekends the ball fields are used from early morning till dark. Hundreds of people use a field in a single day. It seems the Parks Department’s little secret is that their experience says the more garbage cans in parks, the more garbage seems to show up. People bring garbage from their homes and people who use the park just simply seem to put garbage next to the small trash cans, thinking that it is not a big deal and parks sanitation will just pick it up eventually.
Why didn’t anybody think of putting large garbage bins in the parks? Not sure, but it certainly makes sense. Let’s have the idea of large bins that now exist at McCarren Park be picked up by other council representatives. It just makes sense as a way to keep our parks cleaner.
Hats off to Lincoln Restler. Thinking outside the box indeed.
