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When sanitation services are privatized, contractors make money and residents end up with poor garbage collection and filthy streets … using government employees to do the job is actually the cheapest and most cost-effective way to achieve a clean city.”

Economist Moshe Adler, summing up the lessons New York City learned from privatized garbage. Adler, who works in the urban planning department at Columbia University, shared the city’s experience in the Toronto Star in 2002, when the city was considering privatizing garbage collection.