The Mafia and the Garbage Rebellion

One of the main sectors that Cosa Nostra has been focusing on in recent years is waste collection.

A vital industry, garbage collection or carting is a crucial function of any major city or jurisdiction. A vital necessity in the daily lives of both urban and suburban residents, one cannot imagine life without removing the daily trash and litter that every human being steadily creates.

It’s an unspoken service that we rarely think about. But when we do, we quickly realize what a mess we would have on our hands if our daily trash removal wasn’t handled quickly and properly.

Many municipalities handle their own waste disposal with a city-run sanitation department. For example, New York City has the NYC Sanitation Department, which is run as a formal department, similar to the NYC Fire Department and NYC Police Department.

It’s a civil service job. After about 20 years, these city employees are eligible for a pension, just like any other city employee. New York City residents pay a small annual fee built into their tax bill to pay for this weekly service.

But we’re only talking about the waste generated by the private residents of New York City. All the commercial waste, the waste generated by a million businesses, large and small, throughout Manhattan and the four outer boroughs and suburbs, has always been privatized.

Hundreds of private garbage collection/cart companies have controlled this segment of the industry since day one. Millions of small and large businesses and large corporations depend on this steady, unwavering service.

Many New York City suburbs, including Long Island, Westchester and other municipalities, have for decades outsourced their residential and commercial trash collection to private companies, finding that doing so would ease the financial burden on local governments and the complex logistics required to run such a sprawling, monolithic government department.

Many cities and towns in other states have also “privatized” this industry. They outsource this service in the same way New York City does through an annual bidding process where privately owned carts submit secret “bids” to serve certain neighborhoods, towns, or sections of the city.

The contract awarded usually goes to the lowest bidder. It can be a one-year, two-year, or even five-year contract. It depends on the ordinances set by the local government. For example, many townships in Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island have always had private garbage haulers pick up their trash.

And here comes the crowd!

“rag pickers”

The Mafia has always been involved in cleaning up trash. Many early Italian immigrants became interested in this business soon after arriving at Ellis Island.

Starting with the ‘rag trade’, largely because it was cheap and easy to get into, the ‘rag collectors’, as they were called, slowly moved on to hauling away rubbish and debris for customers by horse and cart throughout the five boroughs in the early 1920s.

Over the decades this has developed into all facets of traditional waste collection, for both household and commercial waste.

Another great spin-off business from the original ragpickers was one that would evolve into the lucrative “demolition” business. A spin-off from the scrap yard was the scrap metal industry.

Collectively, the various facets of these sub-industries have evolved into an almost unpredictable industry that turns over billions of dollars annually.

In the early 1970s, another huge spin-off industry emerged. With the steady increase in industrial evolution, the production of toxic waste became a major ecological problem, not only for the United States but for the entire world.

From this emerged the toxic waste disposal industry, which expanded to epic proportions, and with it the costly logistics of properly disposing of these noxious fumes and dangerous, potentially deadly chemicals.

Of course, with an environmentally conscious public, the government soon encouraged smart businessmen and trucking companies to get into the “recycling business,” which today is paramount to the health of every city, town, or other jurisdiction in the world.

These combined industries quickly became a highly valuable commodity for organized crime. Although many independent and loosely “connected” racketeers of all ethnicities were attracted by the large profits to be made, no entity or group became more involved than the Mafia.

A dominant force

Cosa Nostra is today, as it was then, without a doubt the dominant force in all of these sister industries. If they are not directly involved in corporate ownership, as many mafiosi are, then almost all of the companies and individuals operating in the entire sector owe allegiance in one way or another to one mafiosi or another, to one borgata or another.

For many decades, it was virtually impossible for trucking companies in certain major mafia-dominated cities or states to operate in that business without paying homage to the boys.

Whether it was joining a trade association created by a mafia boss or a mafia-created union that controlled the drivers and helpers who operated garbage trucks, waste scales and depots, dumps and landfills, Cosa Nostra almost always had a hand in the pie.

But apart from the tax services and associations, many mafiosi actually own garbage collection companies, scrap metal companies and even landfills which are so important to the industry when it comes to dumping and legally processing the collected waste.

Even on its own, when running at full ‘high revs’, the karting business has always been a very lucrative industry to be in.

Furthermore, with their shark-like business acumen and ability to “cut corners” to gain an edge, Cosa Nostra’s soldiers and associates have created a veritable goldmine for themselves over the decades, not only in New York City and its environs, counties and jurisdictions, but in many other states as well.

Law enforcement in the neighboring states of New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania have repeatedly investigated the deep penetration of Italian organized crime into their states.

All of these states have seen firsthand the stranglehold that Cosa Nostra and its loyal henchmen in this industry have managed to achieve on its citizens. This absolute control demonstrated by the Mafia has earned organized crime billions (not millions) of worthless dollars over the years.

For decades, the Mafia has had a monolithic stranglehold and dominion over this entire industry, virtually smothering and “poaching” all potential competition as only Cosa Nostra can.

What I have compiled below, while very comprehensive, is only a short list of the literally hundreds of karting companies that have been in business for decades in New York City, Long Island, Westchester, New Jersey and Connecticut.

In addition, we name many of the most prominent criminals and mafiosi who have pulled the strings since the industry’s inception.

It is a crucial check the likes of which we have never seen before. Even for the mafia, it is a monumental achievement.