It’s not uncommon to walk past litter in a major city: what’s uncommon is stopping to do something about it.
Yet it wasn’t just litter that Queens resident Joshua Service walked past on a recent rail commute, but a spontaneous dumping site.
Mr. Service whipped out his phone and recorded a video of the piles of garbage under a metro bridge in Crown Heights near Atlantic Avenue, calling out the city’s 311 number, which handles non-emergency civil services, for not doing its job.
The city’s Department of Sanitation would respond to the complaint eventually, saying that they weren’t able to clear the rubbish because of concerns it might have been a homeless encampment. Yet while Service was going through official channels, he found the solution to the problem in the comment section of his own video.
“People were telling me, ‘Oh, how about you stop making videos about it, and go clean it yourself?’ So I did,” Service told CBS News.
Sanitation had said that the city’s Department of Social Services would have to visit the site everyday for 7 days before it could be cleaned. Service wasn’t going to wait for Services, and showed up with some gloves and a rake, eventually filling up 10 trash bags.
“Phenomenal. It was philanthropic. He was passionate about it and cleaned it up. [It’s] something we need more of,” said Haile Ali, a resident of Crown Heights who saw the initiative Mr. Service had taken.
“It’s a step forward. When you deal with the things going on on this planet, raindrops make puddles, so every little bit counts. You know what I mean?”
The work took about 2 hours, during which time Service more or less determined that if the area had been a homeless encampment, others had turned it into a convenient garbage dump.
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NYC’s Department of Homeless Services said that they later encountered a homeless resident in that immediate area, whom they were able to find space for in a shelter and off the rapidly chilling streets.
While he worked, several people asked Service if he was an employee at one of the city’s departments.
He responded that he wasn’t: and that he was just a New Yorker, worried about the state of his city.
City Councilmember Chi Ossé planned to honor Service for his service last Friday at the very spot he cleaned up.
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