Every night, black plastic garbage bags appear on the streets of New York City, like blackheads on a teenager’s nose. A little more than a third of each bag is food scraps: vegetable peels, moldy berries, unwanted tuna salad—organic matter that, in another city, might have been composted. About a sixth is material that should have been recycled: junk mail, plastic water bottles. The rest is what the Department of Sanitation calls “refuse.” This is the actual trash. Broken phone chargers. Cat litter. Expired pills. Nail clippings.
Two or three times a week, depending on the neighborhood, large white collection trucks make their rounds, each operated by two Department of Sanitation workers, who collect the bags. In the summer, the bags reek. In the winter, they’re frozen solid. When lifted, they often leak a dark, viscous juice whose smell can linger for days. Sanitation workers quickly learn that the liquid can be a distraction from other dangers in the bags. Wire hangers. Chicken bones. Things that puncture not just plastic bags but human skin and flesh.
Many bags can be carried in one hand, but outside large apartment buildings superintendents put out “sausage bags,” long, unwieldy monstrosities that typically require two sanitation workers to toss into the hopper, the open mouth at the rear of a collection truck. With the pull of a lever, a worker activates the hopper’s powerful hydraulic jaw, which chomps down on the trash and compacts it. Workers stand away from the truck while this is happening, as liquid and small metal objects sometimes fly out at high speeds.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة April 15, 2024 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
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هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة April 15, 2024 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
STUNTED
\"The Fall Guy.\"
MOTHERS OF US ALL
Paula Vogel's \"Mother Play,\" Shaina Taub's \"Suffs,\" and Amy Herzog's \"Mary Jane.\"
PURE PLEASURE
The \"Radical Optimism\" of Dua Lipa.
PARADISE LOST
The search for a home that never was in Claire Messud's new novel.
ORIGIN STORY
What do we hope to learn from our prehistory?
DEATH IN VENICE
At the Biennale, the past dignifies the weird, desperate present.
WE'RE NOT SO DIFFERENT, YOU AND I
\"You'll never get away with this!\" Ultra Man vowed as he wriggled in his chains. \"You may destroy me, but you'll never destroy what I stand for!\"
STONES OF CONTENTION
The British Museum faces accusations of cultural theft-and actual theft.
A CAMPUS IN CRISIS
Dissent and defiance at Columbia's pro-Palestine protests.
ARROW RETRIEVER
I am an arrow retriever. After a batrows are costly and time-consuming to make. It seems like a terrible waste-and maybe even a sin―for an arrow to fall to the ground without hitting someone. Even if the arrow kills somebody, it can be reused to kill someone else. As Randolf the Scot famously said, \"Arrows don't grow on trees.\"