Scrap recycling removes eyesores from NYC streets

Scrap metal recyclers were undoubtedly doing their best to obtain obsolete autos for recycling in the 1980s, but records from the New York City Department of Sanitation help reveal their more recent success in collecting them before they become an eyesore.

Statistics maintained by Department of Sanitation are cited in a mid-August 2015 New York Times blog post that accompanies 1980s-era photographs of the abandoned cars that used to clutter the city’s scenery.

The blogger notes that in 1988 the Department of Sanitation removed more than 148,000 cars from New York City streets (and occasionally waterways), for an average of more than 400 cars per day.

One quarter of a century later, in fiscal year 2013, the department towed away fewer than 2,200 abandoned vehicles, or less than 1.5 percent of the 1988 total.

Blogger John Leland cites “changes in laws, the value of scrap metal and car security systems” as reasons that in the past 25 years “car theft and abandonment [have slowed] to a near standstill.”

Adds Leland, “These days, as steel mills have increasingly turned to recycling old metal, a junker is too valuable to just leave by the side of the road. Somebody wants it and will pay for it.”

The blog post is accompanied by a slide show featuring nine examples of abandoned cars in New York City from earlier decades.