Waste Management and Recycling in Times Square

Times Square has 500,000 pedestrians passing through each day that toss out 15,300 pounds of garbage. As a major entertainment, business, and tourist epicenter in the heart of Manhattan, former New York City Mayor Bloomberg’s administration decided that it would be a perfect place to debut the city’s largest public space recycling program in 2013.

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  • This NYC initiative deployed 30 Bigbelly smart waste and recycling stations to Times Square to encourage, capture, and measure public space recycling. The initial program proved a success with measurable and significant recycling diversion, productivity gains, and cleaner public spaces. Times Square has since expanded their deployment to 197 smart stations with built-in compaction, fullness sensing, and collection notifications. Today, 40% of public waste is properly recycled, 50% less time is spent collecting bins, and TSA has fully embraced Bigbelly as an innovative way to keep up with people and their waste. New York City’s Times Square effectively manages 26,056 gallons of waste and recycling each day with BigBelly.