Off-campus students have reported an abundance of broken glass, debris and litter on the streets of South Oakland.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many students who call South Oakland home have expressed frustration at the large increase of loose trash across the area. Some have felt inconvenienced and concerned about possible hazards that make traveling through the area more difficult.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Naomi Thompson, a junior economics major, said she has to step over trash frequently when walking through South Oakland.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so bad. Most of the trash cans don\u2019t have lids on them, so when they go to get trash it literally knocks some of them over and nobody picks it up,\u201d Thompson said. \u201cI\u2019m stepping over trash and it smells rancid.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thompson said the trash affects her walk to classes, as she has to avoid certain sidewalks and instead walk along the road.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of it is alcohol trash where people just leave their stuff everywhere,\u201d Thompson said. \u201cBut a lot of the streets are double parked. It\u2019s hard for the [sanitation workers] to get to the cans.\u201d<\/p>\n
The City of Pittsburgh\u2019s environmental service team<\/a> is responsible for the disposal and pickup of refuse and recycling in the streets and sidewalks of South Oakland. Molly Onufer, press secretary for the Mayor\u2019s office, said trash may not be picked up if residents do not follow the City\u2019s set-out requirements.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThese guidelines are intended to keep the people who work for environmental services safe on the job,\u201d Onufer said.<\/p>\n Onufer said actions can be taken to reduce the issues related to residential weekly pickup.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAnyone with concerns about their residential pickup can call our 311 response center, and it will be directed to the appropriate department,\u201d Onufer said.<\/p>\n Rithwik Aggarwal, a junior chemistry and computational biology major, said the trash on the sidewalks in South Oakland make it more difficult to walk to campus.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s already not enough space for cars to park or people to walk. The fact that there\u2019s trash cans and a lot of trash on the sides just makes it harder for me to walk to class in the morning and come back at night,\u201d Aggarwal said. \u201cI have to walk on the road essentially because the sidewalk is full of trash cans.\u201d<\/p>\n Frank Deely, a senior economics major, has lived in South Oakland year round for the past four years and said the trash problem is nothing new.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s cyclical \u2014 move-in week is definitely the worst, and I live here year round. It just builds up and builds up,\u201d Deely said. \u201cThe smell is awful because of the heat, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s significantly worse than it has been over the past four years that I\u2019ve been here.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Students who live in the area believe the problem comes from a variety of sources. Patrick Riordan, a senior environmental science major, believes his fellow residents play a hand in the issue.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the people here don\u2019t take care of their trash,\u201d Riordan said. \u201cAlso, I think the trash gets loaded up [in the trash bins], and the City can be inconsistent.\u201d<\/p>\n Ethan Plow, a senior finance and supply chain management major, said one aspect of the issue stems from a shortage of trash bins in the area.<\/p>\n \u201cMy house is right next to a dumpster that\u2019s shared by many different apartment buildings,\u201d Plow said. \u201cAnd a lot of the time, we get trash overflowing out of that dumpster, and pretty much all the cans around the street.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Aggarwal said some of the buildup is caused by infrequent trash pickup in South Oakland.<\/p>\n \u201cI personally don\u2019t see the garbage [truck] coming around one day every week. I think that just adds to the problem [because the trash is] just left there,\u201d Aggarwal said. \u201cAnd students not being clean or taking care of their own space surrounding their apartments is also worsening the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Alex Alder, a pre-pharmaceutical sophomore, said the issue should not have to be resolved by the students.<\/p>\n \u201cI think someone could be doing more, whether it\u2019s the University or the City, because we do pay a decent amount of taxes,\u201d Alder said.<\/p>\n Issues with excess trash have also led to additional problems for some residents. Aggarwal said the trash has attracted pests to his apartment.<\/p>\n \u201cSince the trash is just lying out there, there\u2019s lots of bugs and flies around and even when I try to open my window, sometimes at home, there\u2019ll be the occasional fly that comes in and I feel like that\u2019s partly due to the trash,\u201d Aggarwal said.<\/p>\n Aggarwal said there is also a health risk regarding rats and mice around the trash on the sidewalks in South Oakland.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the trash lying around also [brings] lots of mice and rats that roam around,\u201d Aggarwal said. \u201c[There\u2019s] rodents, insects, all that comes around with the trash.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Thompson said she is looking to move out of South Oakland because of the trash problem.<\/p>\n \u201cI actually am looking to try and get out of South Oakland because of the trash,\u201d Thompson said \u201cIt actually depresses me so much. I\u2019m walking to school and I\u2019m like, \u2018man, this really sucks.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Off-campus students have reported an abundance of broken glass, debris and litter on the streets of South Oakland.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":["post-300786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}