This just screams good old-fashioned political machine corruption. The garbage collectors are unionized and have a good bit of political influence. It seems like NYC has been running its trash collection as a make-work program for years. The only advantage of doing trash this way is that it means you need to hire way more garbage collectors than you would with other systems. I'm all for having well paid jobs and providing people opportunities, but there are ways to do that without creating a huge public health nuisance.