PORT RICHMOND — Business owners are being asked to empty the city's overflowing trash cans in an effort to tackle litter in Staten Island.
Borough President James Oddo is urging local business owners to help the Sanitation Department by replacing plastic liners inside garbage cans next to their premises.
Oddo joined Councilman Steve Matteo and Department of Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia to push the "Adopt-a-Basket" program.
"To get to the quality of life that we want, to get to the Staten Island we want, we need more Staten Islanders to be part of the solution," Oddo said.
"We need more folks to take it upon themselves to make this borough a cleaner, better place."
The program, which currently has about 74 businesses in the borough signed up, provides owners the liners and a basket if none are near by, Garcia said. The owners are then tasked with removing bags from the cans when they're full until Sanitation works can collect them.
"We're really pushing this program citywide because we think it could be effective," Garcia said.
The idea to make a push for the program came out of Oddo's "Litter Summit" in April and is part of a larger anti-litter campaign he's pushed in his office platform.
Oddo also started a "clean team" that responds to requests of litter from residents. They're planning to start a learn to recycle class in Staten Island schools and plan to announce a large scale ticketing campaign in the summer to target individuals who are caught littering.
"We're not going to be deterred by the guy who throws the McDonald['s] bag out the window," Oddo said.
"We're going to go after the litter, we're going to continue to educate and we're going to continue to fight this fight until we see the improvement we want."
Just this year, Oddo's team has done 67 cleanups of the 197 requested around the borough.
