Showing posts with label sketchy pink boxes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sketchy pink boxes. Show all posts
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Sketchy blue box arrives on Avenue C
This arrived Friday outside La Plaza at East Ninth Street … the city has already tagged it for removal. Seeing as they are illegal and all.
The city previsouly hauled off a sketchy pink box from nearby in recent weeks.
Previously on EV Grieve:
About those new sketchy pink boxes around the East Village
The sketchy pink boxes are going away
Oh no! Here come the sketchy blue boxes!
Friday, July 18, 2014
Oh no! Here come the sketchy blue boxes!
Well, just as the city was removing those illegal sketchy pink boxes that recently arrived around the neighborhood … here comes a sketchy blue box on Second Avenue near East First Street where the BP station was.
The MO is the same: Organizations place the boxes near or on vacated properties, making it less likely that the owners would call the city for removal. The number on the box goes to a full voice-mail box at Viltex, the for-profit New Jersey-based company who resells the donated goods to other clothing vendors as well as to companies that use the materials to make rags, as DNAinfo reported.
Here's the Times from July 6 with more on the uptick of these boxes all over NYC.
City law bans such bins from being placed on sidewalks and streets; they are legal on private property with the consent of the owner. Once found by Sanitation Department enforcement officers or reported by residents to the city’s 311 help line, an illegal bin is tagged and the owner has 30 days to remove it. Summonses are not issued, a department spokeswoman explained, based on the theory that those distributing the bins have factored any fines into the cost of doing business.
And one downside to the proliferation of the for-profit boxes.
A similar pattern has emerged nationally, according to officials at leading charities. They are alarmed by the misleading competition, which, they maintain, is undermining their own efforts.
“These dark-of-night property violators have proliferated nationwide,” said Jim Gibbons, the president and chief executive of Goodwill Industries International Inc. “They use a charitable veneer then extract the value for their business, versus the Salvation Army or St. Vincent de Paul, where the value is distributed in a more thoughtful way throughout the community.”
You can report the boxes to the city here. And did anyone happen to see any other of the blue donation boxes around…?
Previously on EV Grieve:
About those new sketchy pink boxes around the East Village
The sketchy pink boxes are going away
Friday, July 11, 2014
Workers actually spotted removing donations from East 10th Street sketchy pink box
An EVG reader came across this scene on East 10th Street between Avenue B and Avenue C this morning ... outside the former CHARAS/El Bohio community center ... where a group of workers in an Enterprise truck rental were removing the donations left behind in one of the illegal boxes ...
The workers got here just in time: This is one of the collection boxes that the city has tagged for removal.
Otherwise, as the reader noted: "Gregg Singer is an absentee landlord, so he likely never reported the box's presence..since he doesn't even know it's there."
The former PS 64 and CHARAS/El Bohio community center has been sitting derelict for 15 years as Singer continues to attempt to turn the building into a dorm.
Previously on EV Grieve:
About those new sketchy pink boxes around the East Village
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
The sketchy pink boxes are going away
[East 10th Street between Avenue B and C]
City workers have been hauling away those recycling boxes that were unceremoniously dumped around the neighbor the last week of June.
Among others, we've noticed that the boxes on East 14th Street and Avenue C, East Second Street and Avenue C and East 13th Street near Second Avenue are now gone.
The Sanitation Department has marked other illegal boxes for removal.
[Photo via Dave on 7th]
The Times had an article on this recycling trend yesterday.
A growing number of companies — many of them based in New Jersey — are illegally placing used-clothing bins throughout New York City, blocking sidewalks and serving as magnets for litter and graffiti. The receptacles typically have signs that indicate donated goods will go to the poor or, in some cases, to legitimate charities. But, city officials said, the needy do not benefit from much of what is collected. Instead, the clothing is often sold in thrift stores or in bulk oveseas, with the proceeds going to for-profit entities that can be impossible to trace, or even to contact.
“They have become the bane of our existence,” Kathryn Garcia, the city’s sanitation commissioner, said. “We have seen a significant uptick in the number of clothing bins placed illegally on public sidewalks. A dramatic increase.”
You can report the boxes to the city here.
Previously on EV Grieve:
About those new sketchy pink boxes around the East Village
Thursday, July 3, 2014
[Updated] Sketchy pink boxes starting to fit right in!
After less than a week on East Village streets, we noticed that people have welcomed those sketchy pink boxes to the neighborhood…
DNAinfo's Lisha Arino dug into these boxes, so to speak, and spoke to some property owners who said they had NOT given permission for the sketchy pink boxes to be installed on their land.
And the response from the company?
Our Neighborhood Recycling manager Bernard Jones insisted that the company, which has a warehouse in Jersey City, got permission from all property owners to install them.
“We tell them exactly what we’re doing and it’s up to them to say yes or no,” he said.
And what about the clothes, shoes, etc., that people leave in them?
[Jones] added that the company plans to resell donated clothing to other clothing vendors, as well as to companies that use the clothing to make rags. The signage, he said, makes it clear the organization is not a charity.
“It doesn’t say ‘donations.’ It says ‘recycling,’” he said.
The Department of Sanitation could not say whether the Our Neighborhood Recycling bins are illegal, per DNAinfo.
Updated 9:50 a.m.
BoweryBoogie reports that the Department of Sanitation has swung into action against the Sketchy Pink Boxes.
Updated 1:45 p.m.
A reader says that the box along the Verizon building on East 13th Street has been removed...
Previously on EV Grieve:
About those new sketchy pink boxes around the East Village
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
About those new sketchy pink boxes around the East Village
You probably noticed (well, how could you not?) the arrival of these PINK clothing collection boxes ... conveniently located in our favorite corners of the East Village...
BoweryBoogie noted that the clothing collection boxes, which belong to a Florida-based company called USAgain, also arrived on the Lower East Side.
They've been in Bayside, Queens longer. According to the Times Ledger there:
A woman who answered a call placed to the phone number on the box said Our Neighborhood Recycling ships the clothes overseas but hung up without giving more details. Community leaders said they fear whomever is placing the boxes around the neighborhood is taking the clothes donations and selling them for personal profit.
Anyway, the collection boxes are illegal. You can report them to the city here.
EVG reader Creature first alerted us to the arrival of these boxes on Friday ... after he spotted the lone red one on East Sixth Street near First Avenue ...
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