Over the past year, you may have taken note of our new solar-operated (and rodent proof!) Big Belly waste systems here in Madison Square Park. Thanks to the generous contributions of our community, these waste stations have improved our team’s efficiency in managing trash and bolstered the overall cleanliness of the park. 

Connected to a digital app, our operations team is alerted once an individual unit is full and ready to collect. The team then brings the garbage to a staging area where it’s picked up by a contracted waste manager.

We officially cut the ribbon on these new, enclosed waste systems in September 2023, which means we now have about a full year’s worth of data from the new waste system in our park. 

In the time since their installation, nearly one million gallons of waste and recyclables have moved through the units situated in Madison Square Park, totalling approximately 922 thousand gallons. Of this figure, 681 thousand gallons represents waste (74%) and 242 thousand represents recycled materials (26%). So far in 2024, the total amount of waste and recycling collected averages nearly 90 thousand gallons per month. 

Data collected from the digital app connected indicates that the average unit is emptied more than three separate times per day, but this varies greatly by location and time of year. 

Since January 2024, MSPC is proud to work with a waste management company that diverts 100% of its collected waste from landfills. The recyclables are brought as a single stream to a facility in Queens where the waste is processed and sorted through several machines, then checked by hand to ensure maximum quality control. Paper, cardboard, metals, and plastics are all bailed at the facility and sold to be remanufactured into new goods.

The remaining waste is sent to the Covanta Waste to Energy Facility in Westbury, NY. This facility helps keep trash out of landfills – reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the area by 887 thousand metric tons of CO2 each year and providing energy for 55,000 homes. This facility also operates with exacting air quality standards: materials that are burned are passed through high-level filtration systems that clean over 99 percent of emissions.

So the next time you dispose of an item in Madison Square Park, you can rest assured that every pound is being diverted in a sustainable way. And while it’s great news that waste in our park is being redirected from landfills, the most sustainable practice is not to produce it in the first place.

922 thousand gallons is a lot of waste produced by a single park, and it still needs to be carted off site, which uses fuel and is expensive. In order to truly build the sustainable world we imagine, we all as individuals need to reevaluate our choices as consumers in a large city. These choices add up over time, and being mindful about how much we consume and dispose of will be vital for the generations to come. Wherever possible, remember to reduce, reuse, and only then recycle.