It’s definitely squirrels and rats looking for food, but yeah there’s not much you can do unfortunately. If you could get your neighbors to put their trash in a can with a lid, or put their trash out in the morning, your problem would be solved.

I know it’s annoying, but maybe making a sign or leave a note for your neighbors to see that clues them into the fact that it’s animals who are tearing open the bags to get their food scraps. I know that they should know better, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t ever think about it. Maybe hoping that they would do something different after finding out is naive, but I doubt they wanna be stepping over tons of trash outside their own building every day. Hopefully.

Thank you for this. I agree it would be a lot, but it would be worth it.

It’s really not. I look around my neighborhood every day. I never see rotting food. I never see ANYTHING on the ground that doesn’t look like someone thought they could recycle it. Why does everyone think this issue is impossible? Other cities don’t have this problem? Other cities can’t deal with it?

I wish someone would listen: It’s NOT THE TRASH, it’s the un-bagged recycling that is covering our streets. Please, actually look around; it’s not dirty diapers, it’s not piles of uneaten food covering our streets. When you see “trash” on the ground PLEASE ask yourself: “does this look like stuff my neighbors would try to recycle?” 9 out of 10 times, it is.

This is because the city has a rule against bagging recycling. And since we can’t use bags, stuff falls out of our recycling bins- Usually from when it’s really windy, or when the recycling people dump the bins and stuff falls out (or gets stuck in the bins and then falls out when it gets thrown back to the curb). I’m not saying nobody is to blame here, but I’m telling you that street sweeping won’t fix the cause of the problem: un-bagged recycling.

Inevitably, someone chimes in with “the recycling plants can’t handle stuff in plastic bags” as if it’s too expensive to hire someone with a knife to open the bags before the stuff is sorted. Nah, we can’t do that. Much too hard.

Every time I say this stuff I get downvotes because it doesn’t fit this sub’s weird narrative about who is at fault, but please, just once, compare what your sidewalk looks like the day BEFORE recycling day, and the day AFTER. Look around at what’s covering the street. 9 out of 10 times it’s un-bagged recycling.

Not to be a bummer because I agree with the sentiment of this post, but try telling this to all the inventors and business owners who do something completely unique and have their ideas stolen (and popularized) by someone else. History isn’t thanking you for being the first to do something if it’s immediately stolen from you.

At least they didn’t toss your bin back towards your house and put a nice little dent in the hood of your car. Lazy fucks.

Asking the real questions