What the haul?
The city Sanitation Department cracked down on bottle collectors this month, trashing pushcarts used by poor and elderly Lower East Siders to collect cans for cash.
Neighborhood shutterbug David “Shadi” Perez captured images of garbage men using bolt cutters to clip the carts off poles near Grand Street before chucking them in their truck.
Now, angry residents are raising money to buy new carts for the Chinatown can collectors.
“It’s weird that they target these little shopping carts,” Perez said. “These people aren’t well-to-do. They’re homeless or live in tiny apartments.”
But Sanitation denied the canner crackdown and said the workers junked the handcarts following a 311 complaint of a foul odor.
“We inspected [the cart] and found it contained rotting food and two dead rodents,” an agency spokesman said. “A DSNY supervisor ordered that for health reasons it be cut from the chain holding it onto the sign pole and disposed.”
The department did not say why at least two other pushcarts were also thrown in the garbage.