In early December, Bronx residents joined the Bronx Solid Waste Advisory Board (SWAB) –a community-driven environmental justice group– in Melrose to brainstorm ideas about how to improve the Bronx as part of their “Green the Bronx” initiative.
SWAB intends to directly involve Bronx residents in environmental issues that affect their neighborhoods like solid waste. Their contributions can influence how the Bronx is affected by the 2026 NYC Solid Waste Management Plan.
With their plan, SWAB wants to provide a framework for programs that will lead the city into the next era of waste reduction, reuse, recycling and resource recovery.
“There is a bill, Intro 696, that Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso is championing and it’s really about increasing the infrastructure for the organics processing, for composting,” said the chair of the Bronx SWAB, Dior St. Hillaire.
“What we plan to do with the new administration is to not only inform them around the environmental justice issues, so that they’re prioritized as we are dealing with some of these waste inequities in the Bronx, but also making sure that their administration is in support of cooperative development,” she added.
Waste inequities are against a backdrop of a long history of environmental racism in the South Bronx. The community serves an important role in improving their quality of life. According to the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA), NYC creates roughly 44 million pounds of garbage daily.
Communities in North Brooklyn, the South Bronx, Sunset Park and Southeast Queens are saturated with privately owned and operated waste transfer stations that manage citywide commercial waste. The stations in these communities of color have contributed to worsening asthma rates, heavy truck traffic, noise, pollution and odor, according to NYC-EJA.
“I think it’s really bad in the Concourse, Yankee Stadium area. I see dumping a lot around the train by West Farms in the middle… around the corner to go on a highway,” St. Hillaire said.
“There’s a lot of illegal dumping there, but I also see trash piles sometimes with the NYCHA buildings. It really is just in the most random of places.”
St. Hillaire also mentioned that the worst trash pile she’s seen is in Hunts Point, which is heavily affected by the Cross Bronx Expressway.
Beautiful Winston, originally from Brooklyn, moved to the Bronx a few years ago. She’s a community board 3 member, and she wanted to be a part of improving the Bronx.
“The Bronx is a beautiful place, it’s just filthy. They’re [developers] doing a lot of building, but they’re not doing any cleaning so I’m here to figure out what I can do to help clean up the Bronx and what the plans are for that,” Winston said.
“I’m mostly in the South Bronx here, and I could say actually the most pile up I’ve seen is in the building that I live in. We have a garage area that we come into and they pile up all the trash in that,” she said.
Winston complained about the November 2024 rule change by the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) that required buildings to collect trash later in the day, which led to more waste piling up.
Argelia Ortiz, a lifelong Bronx resident, advocate and member of the environmental committee for Bronx community board 1 said that the sanitation department needs to be more consistent with trash pickup in certain areas
“The worst trash pile up is right here on 149th Street in that square known as the Hub. I think it’s one of the worst venues. A lot of businesses will come and dump their trash there,” Ortiz said.
“Another dumpster is the Hunts Point market area. All kinds of traffic come through there, but nobody is cleaning it up. And that’s an area that gets a large amount of traffic. It literally stinks… the Yankee Stadium area, whenever there’s a game out there it’s horrendous. Why doesn’t sanitation make it their business to clean up the area more often? The neighborhood has to put up with it,” she added.
The Bronx SWAB will continue to host similar meetings to keep residents informed and engaged about what’s going on with policy decisions.
“More people need to know we exist. If you care about these things, come join us because we’re actually building a Bronx zero waste center. Be a part of that legacy and change the narrative of our borough,” St. Hillaire said.
Reach Keke Grant-Floyd at keiwana.grantfloyd19@gmail.com. For more coverage, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram!
