Five of these images were taken around my neighborhood, Washington Heights in Manhattan, while one of the images was taken in the Bronx, where I work at. Around my neighborhood, there’s an Ecuadorian restaurant next to my building, Subways, two bakery shops, six grocery stores, Burger King, McDonald’s, three pizza shops, two chinese restaurants, and around five other restaurants. Around where I work, there’s also a McDonald’s and around four to five other restaurants. I’ve noticed that inside the trash cans, there are lots of bottles, bags of chips. pizza boxes, chicken bones, and other food item wrappers. On the piles of trash that are left on the sidewalk were storage boxes where food would arrive to restaurants and other food locations. I’ve noticed that restaurants around my building dispose old oil in the garbage bags. As seen in one of the pictures, as the garbage bags were carried to a location on the sidewalk, the oil was spilling from the bottom of the garbage bags and left a path of oil leading to where the garbage bags are placed.
Honestly, this really doesn’t concern me, but the fact that I’ve seen rats around one of the bakeries around my neighborhood and rats coming out of the 1 Train Station at night recently, I am a bit concern that the amount of rats will spread around the neighborhood and will even get inside buildings. I actually do compare this situation to the first assignment because rats love food and they do appear in food locations to feed themselves. Of course they are smart enough to appear at night where there are less people, therefore possibly no one will see them sneaking around looking for food. They are actually opportunities for interventions that would curb the rodent population, and that is that garbage trucks shouldn’t just be around in the morning picking up the garbage cans. Garbage trucks should be around the neighborhood twice or three times a day so the amount of rats can decrease around garbage bags and cans. The restaurants should be left clean and tidy as well before closing, as well.
