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I was about 10 years old

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on a camping trip with my dad

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in the Adirondack Mountains, a wilderness area

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in the northern part of New York State.

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It was a beautiful day.

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The forest was sparkling.

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The sun made the leaves glow like stained glass,

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and if it weren't for the path we were following,

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we could almost pretend we were

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the first human beings to ever walk that land.

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We got to our campsite.

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It was a lean-to on a bluff

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looking over a crystal, beautiful lake,

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when I discovered a horror.

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Behind the lean-to was a dump,

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maybe 40 feet square

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with rotting apple cores

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and balled-up aluminum foil,

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and a dead sneaker.

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And I was astonished,

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I was very angry, and I was deeply confused.

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The campers who were too lazy

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to take out what they had brought in,

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who did they think would clean up after them?

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That question stayed with me,

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and it simplified a little.

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Who cleans up after us?

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However you configure

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or wherever you place the us,

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who cleans up after us in Istanbul?

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Who cleans up after us in Rio

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or in Paris or in London?

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Here in New York,

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the Department of Sanitation cleans up after us,

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to the tune of 11,000 tons of garbage

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and 2,000 tons of recyclables every day.

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I wanted to get to know them as individuals.

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I wanted to understand who takes the job,

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what's it like to wear the uniform

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and bear that burden.

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So I started a research project with them.

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I rode in the trucks and walked the routes

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and interviewed people in offices and facilities

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all over the city,

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and I learned a lot,

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but I was still an outsider.

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I needed to go deeper.

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So I took the job as a sanitation worker.

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I didn't just ride in the trucks now. I drove the trucks.

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And I operated the mechanical brooms and I plowed the snow.

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It was a remarkable privilege

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and an amazing education.

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Everyone asks about the smell.

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It's there, but it's not as prevalent as you think,

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and on days when it is really bad,

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you get used to it rather quickly.

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The weight takes a long time to get used to.

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I knew people who were several years on the job

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whose bodies were still adjusting to the burden

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of bearing on your body

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tons of trash every week.

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Then there's the danger.

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According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,

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sanitation work is one of the 10 most dangerous

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occupations in the country,

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and I learned why.

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You're in and out of traffic all day,

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and it's zooming around you.

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It just wants to get past you, so it's often

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the motorist is not paying attention.

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That's really bad for the worker.

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And then the garbage itself is full of hazards

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that often fly back out of the truck

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and do terrible harm.

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I also learned about the relentlessness of trash.

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When you step off the curb

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and you see a city from behind a truck,

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you come to understand that trash

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is like a force of nature unto itself.

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It never stops coming.

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It's also like a form of respiration or circulation.

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It must always be in motion.

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And then there's the stigma.

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You put on the uniform, and you become invisible

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until someone is upset with you for whatever reason

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like you've blocked traffic with your truck,

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or you're taking a break too close to their home,

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or you're drinking coffee in their diner,

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and they will come and scorn you,

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and tell you that they don't want you anywhere near them.

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I find the stigma especially ironic,

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because I strongly believe that sanitation workers

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are the most important labor force

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on the streets of the city, for three reasons.

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They are the first guardians of public health.

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If they're not taking away trash

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efficiently and effectively every day,

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it starts to spill out of its containments,

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and the dangers inherent to it threaten us

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in very real ways.

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Diseases we've had in check for decades and centuries

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burst forth again and start to harm us.

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The economy needs them.

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If we can't throw out the old stuff,

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we have no room for the new stuff,

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so then the engines of the economy

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start to sputter when consumption is compromised.

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I'm not advocating capitalism, I'm just pointing out their relationship.

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And then there's what I call

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our average, necessary quotidian velocity.

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By that I simply mean

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how fast we're used to moving

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in the contemporary day and age.

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We usually don't care for repair, clean, carry around

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our coffee cup, our shopping bag,

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our bottle of water.

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We use them, we throw them out, we forget about them,

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because we know there's a work force

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on the other side that's going to take it all away.

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So I want to suggest today a couple of ways

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to think about sanitation that will perhaps help

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ameliorate the stigma

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and bring them into this conversation

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of how to craft a city that is sustainable and humane.

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Their work, I think, is kind of liturgical.

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They're on the streets every day, rhythmically.

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They wear a uniform in many cities.

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You know when to expect them.

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And their work lets us do our work.

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They are almost a form of reassurance.

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The flow that they maintain

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keeps us safe from ourselves,

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from our own dross, our cast-offs,

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and that flow must be maintained always

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no matter what.

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On the day after September 11 in 2001,

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I heard the growl of a sanitation truck on the street,

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and I grabbed my infant son and I ran downstairs

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and there was a man doing his paper recycling route

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like he did every Wednesday.

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And I tried to thank him for doing his work

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on that day of all days,

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but I started to cry.

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And he looked at me,

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and he just nodded, and he said,

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"We're going to be okay.

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We're going to be okay."

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It was a little while later that I started

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my research with sanitation,

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and I met that many again.

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His name is Paulie, and we worked together many times,

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and we became good friends.

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I want to believe that Paulie was right.

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We are going to be okay.

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But in our effort to reconfigure

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how we as a species exist on this planet,

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we must include and take account of

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all the costs, including the very real human cost

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of the labor.

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And we also would be well informed

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to reach out to the people who do that work

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and get their expertise

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on how do we think about,

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how do we create systems around sustainability

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that perhaps takes us from curbside recycling,

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which is a remarkable success across 40 years,

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across the United States and countries around the world,

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and lift us up to a broader horizon

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where we're looking at other forms of waste

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that could be lessened

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from manufacturing and industrial sources.

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Municipal waste, what we think of when we talk about garbage,

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accounts for three percent of the nation's waste stream.

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It's a remarkable statistic.

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So in the flow of your days,

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in the flow of your lives,

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next time you see someone whose job is

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to clean up after you,

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take a moment to acknowledge them.

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Take a moment to say thank you.

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(Applause)