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Needles removed
Clean streets, sidewalks, and vacant lots and address quality-of-life issues. — Increase street and sidewalk cleanliness.
The number of needles DSNY collects mostly reflects how many happen to turn up during routine street and lot cleanups, so it moves up and down with incidental discovery rather than a change in policy. DSNY's own reporting attributes the sharp FY26 drop (down 71% in the year's first four months) directly to fewer needles being found during cleanings, not to any pullback in outreach or cleaning effort.
Researched July 16, 2026 — DSNY, Preliminary Fiscal 2026 Mayor's Management Report
* Year to date — this fiscal year isn't complete, so it's not compared against prior years in the target/trend status above. The dashed marker projects a full-year estimate at the current year-to-date pace.
View as table
| Fiscal year | Actual |
|---|---|
| FY22 | 69,692 needles |
| FY23 | 90,861 needles |
| FY24 | 83,807 needles |
| FY25 | 126,247 needles |
| FY26 (YTD) | 20,955 needles |
| FY26 (projected) | ~27,940 needles |
Why this is tracked
Before the 1890s, New York's streets were littered with horse manure, garbage, and human waste, conditions that contributed to disease and were long tolerated under patronage-driven city government. When Colonel George E. Waring Jr. became Street Cleaning Commissioner in 1894 after a brief ouster of Tammany Hall, he built a disciplined, uniformed cleaning force (the "White Wings") and organized systematic street sweeping and garbage sorting, reforms that reshaped city sanitation practice. Today DSNY continues this mission through routine street and sidewalk cleaning, a dedicated Lot Cleaning Unit for vacant City-owned lots (which prevents them from becoming eyesores or pest habitats), and enforcement against illegal dumping and litter.
George Waring - Colonel, Sanitation & NYC - HISTORY, How to Successfully Reform a Bureaucracy: George Waring & the Department of Street Cleaning, Oversight of Street Cleanliness in NYC - NYC Council Data Team
Source: Environmental Police Unit — via NYC Open Data: Mayor's Management Report, Agency Performance Indicators
Coverage shown: FY22–FY26, reported monthly.
Definition: The total number of discarded, improperly disposed needles removed by DSNY.