P&T Knitwear is pleased to welcome Sanitation Foundation to host a ZERO WASTE WORKSHOP: Back to Basics. When a sanitation worker hauls away your trash bin and dumps it in a truck, all that garbage seems to magically disappear—but, as many of us know, that’s simply not the case. Where do our trash and recycling go? Why do we produce so much of it? Has it always been this way? Robin Nagle, the author of the book Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City, and Maggie Lee, Director of Cultural and Educational Programs at the Sanitation Foundation, hope to answer these questions and foster a dialogue about the origins of “throw-away” culture, the impacts it continues to have on New York City and our environment, and who should ultimately be held responsible.

Pre-order your signed edition of Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks With the Sanitation Workers of New York City

New York City produces more than twelve thousand tons of household trash and recyclables a day. As quickly as it accumulates, it’s hauled away. But who makes that happen? What’s life like for the workers with careers built around garbage?

In Picking Up, the anthropologist Robin Nagle takes us inside New York City’s Department of Sanitation, a largely unseen and often unloved army responsible for keeping the city alive. Nagle spent a decade with sanitation people of all ranks to learn what it takes to manage Gotham’s garbage. She even took the job herself, driving trucks and plowing snow while enduring the physical aches, public abuse, and risk of injury that are constant realities of the job. Nagle offers an insider’s perspective on the complex hierarchies, intricate rules, and obscure language unique to this mostly invisible world.

Not just a contemporary account, Picking Up charts New York City’s four-hundred-year struggle with trash. It traces the city’s waste-management efforts from a time when filth overwhelmed the streets to today’s far more vigorous practices, which have made the city cleaner than it’s been in decades.

Complete with vividly evoked characters and memorable descriptions of the sights and smells of the job, Picking Up reveals the vital role sanitation workers play in every city across the globe.

Praise for Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks With the Sanitation Workers of New York City

“Meticulous . . . [Nagle’s] passion for the subject really comes to life.” — The New York Times

“With Picking Up, Nagle joins the likes of Jane Jacobs and Jacob Riis, writers with the chutzpah to dig deep into the Rube Goldberg machine we call the Big Apple and emerge with a lyrical, clear-eyed look at how it works.” — Sydney Brownstone, Mother Jones

“In her 10-year, the sometime-firsthand study of ’san man’ crews, cultural anthropologist Robin Nagle shines a light on their invisible lives . . . [she] evokes the physical and psychological toll of this dangerous, filthy, necessary work.” — Nature

“Nagle worked as a garbage woman to better understand her subject, and that experience, combined with years of research, results in an intimate look at the mostly male workforce as they risk injury and endure insult while doing the city’s dirty work. She also provides a fascinating capsule history of the department and the city’s 400-year relationship with waste.” — Publishers Weekly

Available to ship to most places

• This is a free in-store event with limited amphitheater-style seating
• We encourage all guests to wear masks.
• The talk will be followed by a book signing. Books signed at P&T Knitwear events must be purchased from P&T Knitwear. If you would like a signed copy and cannot attend the event, we’re happy to take your pre-order. We ship to most places!

About the panelists

Robin Nagle has been the official Anthropologist-in-Residence at the NYC Department of Sanitation (DSNY) since 2006. She is also a clinical professor at NYU Liberal Studies, where she teaches environmental studies through an anthropological perspective. Her research focuses on the interdisciplinary field of discard studies and the category of a material culture known generically as “garbage.” She’s interested in the many forms of labor and infrastructure that waste requires, the spatial demands it imposes on urban areas, the organizational responses it inspires, and the cultural practices and attitudes that adhere to it. Her book Picking Up, an ethnography of the DSNY, includes accounts of her time on the job as a sanitation worker.

Maggie Lee leads the Sanitation Foundation’s cultural programs and museum planning work, creating exhibits and developing partnerships that explore the vital role of DSNY in the past, present, and future of New York City. She also serves as DSNY’s Records Management Officer, developing the agency’s records retention policy and working with the Municipal Archives and Municipal Library to identify documents of enduring value. Maggie holds an MA in Archives & Public History and a BFA in Film & Television Production, both from NYU.

About the moderator

Nicole Teran is the founder of Zero Waste NYC Workshop, an educational event series that helps inspire individuals to adopt a low-waste lifestyle and take action on fighting climate change. Nicole also works in Client Services and Education for a reusables startup based in NYC called Re: Dish. After eight years in the advertising industry, Nicole transitioned her career to a sustainability focus in 2018. Since then she has become a low-waste practitioner, a climate action advocate, and an educator in the community. Nicole has worked with corporations, startups, nonprofits, and social enterprises and interviewed and conversed with over 100 sustainability experts from CEOs, to CSR reps, to zero waste film producers, climate change advocates lobbying for policy change, and local community members.

The Zero Waste NYC Workshop series was founded in September 2019 and is in partnership with the Sanitation Foundation, the official nonprofit of the NYC Department of Sanitation.

Time: 6:30 PM — 8:00 PM EST

Free!

Registration