Reflection on Waste workers and safety

With the past week’s readings, I thought that it was a very interesting perspective to explore with waste workers. Though there were many differences between the workers in New York versus the pedal people, they share a similar role and job, where they are collecting waste and maintaining a clean community. Despite their differences in work, where DSNY was highly hierarchical and more traditional waste cleanup and the pedal people were a more environmentally-sustainable method of waste cleanup, these two articles showed deeper perspectives into each and showed the similarities along with these people as well. With these articles, we were able to see a unique insight into this job– on both sides of these jobs, it was extremely physically demanding, had intense hours and early hours, and was overall externally undesirable. This showed the resilience of all waste workers and showed a more personal insight into their work– especially with the pedal people, as it seemed that they made personal connections with many and were highly integrated into their town’s community. But, furthermore, the pedal people seemed to make people more conscious of their waste, as people seemed to more so realize that real people were actually cleaning up and picking up their waste, not just a truck, which is a valuable insight that DSNY and other waste businesses could learn and incorporate. With the known dangers of this job, as it has an extremely high risk rate for injuries and potentially death, bringing down some of the potential risks like broken glass or unsafe waste, whether by a lot or not much at all, could be really beneficial for the waste collectors and could be a more preventative method for injury.  Furthermore, with more incorporation of bikes, like the pedal people, this could help eliminate both machinery-based injuries while being a healthier environmental option, with the elimination of the fossil-fuel using trucks (or, with advancing technologies, maybe this could be combated in some other way in the future).