Green Blog: Overlooked and Underfoot: Sidewalk Cleaning in New York City

They say that gum stays in the stomach for seven years, but how long does a discarded piece remain on the sidewalk?

City property owners do not usually wait to find out. They are required by law to keep their sidewalks free of debris. Gum isn?t specifically covered by the law, but there are questions of how green various gum removal techniques are as competing outfits vie for the work.

One, GumBusters, based in Brooklyn, specializes in removing gum spots from the sidewalk using dry steam, a method it claims is more eco friendly than alternatives, like power washing, which is water-intensive, and freezing, which uses ozone-damaging aerosols.

Gum removal is only part of sidewalk maintenance, the morning ritual that New Yorkers encounter so often on the way to work. Along the Bowery in the East Village, Phebe?s Tavern and Grill uses water and occasionally a diluted bleach solution. Steve?s Deli and Grocery uses soapy water. Peels Bakery and Restaurant uses plain water to wash most of their sidewalk, employing a special de-greaser for the area around trash cans. But to remove gum, Peels hires a power washing company once a month.

In its gum-removal method, GumBusters sprays dry steam ? steam with very low moisture content ? on a gum spot, along with a small concentration of a water-based detergent it calls AAA Gumfighter Solution, then scours it with a brass brush, which removes the gum in seconds, said GumBusters Vice President Andrew Mule?. He claims this method uses less water than power washing and avoids the aerosols used to propel gum-freezing sprays. ?This same general principle ? steam plus detergent ? is also used by the Australian Gum Removal Vehicle.

As for the chemicals used by shopkeepers, like soap and bleach solutions, they probably do not cause much harm to the environment, said Kenneth Pearsall, the United States Geological Survey?s designated water quality specialist for New York.

?I do not think the effects are significant because I don?t expect that washing sidewalks with detergent or bleach or power washing occurs often and I would expect that when it occurs it produces only small quantities of runoff,? Mr. Pearsall wrote in an e-mail. He knew of no Geological Survey study addressing sidewalk washing, and he figured that solutions of soap and bleach used for sidewalk washing may not represent an environmental threat.

The city isn?t specific about how it would like its sidewalks to be cleaned. Property owners are required to ?clean and sweep the sidewalks and gutters next to their property, including 18 inches from the curb into the street,? according to the city?s 311 Web site. People can report dirty sidewalks through an online form.

But keeping sidewalks clean does not need to include gum removal or sidewalk washing, according to Kathy Dawkins, a public information official at the City of New York Sanitation Department. The regulations mainly require property owners to keep sidewalks free of debris. The city does not regulate the kinds of chemicals used to wash the sidewalks, Ms. Dawkins said.

The one environmental aspect of sidewalk washing the city does address is water conservation. During a drought, property owners can only use public water to deal with ?a true health or safety hazard,? a rule that prohibits ordinary sidewalk washing.

Though the city does not generally regulate how people wash the sidewalks, it does regulate when they do it. Sidewalk washing is prohibited from Nov. 1 to March 31 and from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. The Departments of Sanitation and Environmental Protection did not respond to questions about the origins of these regulations.

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Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=4b98e4b60554f200e49af2ea28790292

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