Time to Save New York Streets from Dog Poop

By Tiffany Xinran Wang

April 8, 2025

A Proposal to Curb Dog Waste on New York City Streets
By Tiffany Xinran Wang | Columbia Radio News
Duration: 03:45

Upper East Side mom Danielle Avissar has had enough of dog poop. It sticks onto the wheels of strollers and ends up in her babies' hands when they play with rocks and wood chips in the tree pit.

Avissar even testified at a City Council hearing last year, but nothing had changed. Actually, it only got worse.

There were almost 1,000 complaints from January to March this year. The numbers didn't look as stark in the same three-month period from previous years.

Avissar said more people became pet owners during the pandemic, but not all of them could take on the ensuing responsibilities.

"If you don't stop (them), people will continue and it gets worse and worse and worse," Avissar said. "It's a city that actually needs a lot of policing because people just do whatever they want, however they want. It's the wild, wild West in many ways."

City Council Member Julie Menin proposed a bill last May that "would require the Department of Sanitation to install and regularly fill dog waste bag dispensers on or next to all public litter baskets on city streets." But the bill has stalled.

Council Member Gale Brewer, a co-sponsor of the bill, said that's because different departments in the city government could not agree on a solution.

Brewer said she has seen some block associations put up dog waste bags on lampposts or street signs, but neighborhoods have different infrastructures, making it hard to put down a universal plan into law.

"The Department of Transportation has not come up with how to do this in a large city," Brewer said. "That's the problem right there."

Nonetheless, the city's idea is on the right track. Trash cans and dog waste bags play a big part in keeping the streets clean.

One of the worst spots for stepping in dog poop is Riverside Drive, between West 158th and 160th Street.

There were almost 130 complaints about dog waste from this strip of sidewalk alone in the past three months.

Dog Waste Hotspot: Riverside Drive

311 dog waste complaints in Manhattan Community Board 12 in the first three months of 2025

Resident Robert Murphy walks his dog Kloth on Riverside Drive and has to deal with the dirty condition every day.

“Even then I just saw one, they put it in a bag and then they left it on the sidewalk,” Murphy said. “They couldn't find a garbage can, which is… you know. There are garbage cans all over the place, so it drives me crazy.”

Another resident Celeste Castilla said there are trash bins at the tip and end of the uphill sidewalk, but not in between. She said there used to be two more bins, one at West 160th Street and one before West 158th Street.

“I don't know where those two trash cans disappeared to,” Castilla said, “but I was always appreciative of them because then I had somewhere else to throw away my trash.”

Now the trash bins are gone, the city is receiving two to three 311 calls per day from this location.

New York City’s long-time rival, Boston, always wins the clean streets competition. All over the city, you can see freestanding green stations. They have a box of bags on the top and a little trash can on the bottom.

“The neighborhoods that have more dog waste bags provided have way less dog waste on the sidewalks compared to other parts of the city that don't have that many,” Boston resident Kelli Gossler said.

Gossler was playing frisbee with her dog, Mika, in Boston Common. She said the city can alleviate the problem by helping out dog owners.

“I don't think it's always just bad dog owners,” Gossler said. “I think that it's just circumstantial, like, if you forget a dog bag sometimes. I will happily pick up after my dog, but every once in a while… I'm not doing it on purpose.”