How stupid. They are encouraging NOT recycling and making use of things that others discard. Half the people in this city get furniture and stuff from the street.

What if you put a note on the items that says, 'property of so and so.' That would make it explicit that you are not transferring title to the city and that it is not abandoned property and thus someone can pick it up with a car, no?

The article says they got the deluxe treatment cause it involved a 'vehicle'. Well, there are dozens of garbage pickers disrupting my sleep every recycling day using bicycles, supermarket carts and giant old chevy vans to store the cans and bottles they collect.

Is the sanitation inspector doing anything when the city's real money (from recycling) is being siphoned off- no! They are busy stopping people with dogs on the street in Jackson Heights to see if they have plastic bags for their dog poop.

It's so typical of these pseudo-police to go after the easy targets and ignore the bigger issue.Huge, organized groups of people are still stealing the recycling material that helps bring in real revenue to the city while these 'cops' look the other way to catch a guy with one air conditioner.

To hell with Bloomberg and the corrupt City Council. From top to bottom they are self-serving criminals.

They're not being fined for working, which is a bizarre interpretation of the article, they're being fined because a law was passed to protect the city's revenue from curbside recycling, without that revenue the city cannot afford the program. You can scrap all you want in Pennsylvania, here in New York it's tantamount to taking money out of your neighbor's pocket.

This man and his mother are being penalized for recycling metal?

This man and his mother are being penalized for doing that bad, bad four letter word that no one wants to do...WORK... hard for their money.

Scrappers are cut up, bruised up and get down and dirty ~working~ for their money.

Anyone ever carry a broken, rusty A/C on their bicycle? For that matter anyone try to put a heavy, rusty A/C in their van? I have and I get cut up almost every time.

There are many hard working men and women who recycle metal for some extra money during these hard economic times. They are trying to stay off public assistance by WORKING. Now let's penalize them so they have to go for food stamps and other forms of public assistance that tax payers work for.

Let's not forget that scrappers are held accountable for what they bring in to the scrap yard. They have to give their driver's license and big brother is watching them and the money they make. If the state or local government wants to make money let them tax that income, not fine them for working hard for their money.

Don't socialized countries try to stop a man from working so he's dependent on the government for help?

In my community metals are tossed in the truck and crushed with the other household trash. Do they then recycle that metal? Watch out Pennsylvania here comes more landfill.

Scrappers are probably the only true recyclers. They recycle all metals and take appliances apart to separate the different metals. Yes, they make more money that way and it keeps us from being dependent on using more of our resources to make new metals.

I'm a 51 year old woman who works hard for my money. When I hear that a young man isn't working because there is "no work" out there, and he is living off his parents, wife, girlfriend, I cringe in disbelief. That young man is lazy and doesn't want to work. I get out there and work picking up metal that I find. I'm cut up, bruised and tired after a day's work. BUT....I pay my own bills.

Am I going to be forced to go on public assistance because a source of income is going to be taken away?

Shame on this governmental organization for penalizing a man for trying to make a few bucks for him and his mother.

Go Green! Scrappers are.

"Don't socialized countries try to stop a man from working so he's dependent on the government for help? "

I agree with everything you've said except the sentence I pasted above. Those who have no clue what socialism means really shouldn't use it in a sentence. I've lived in two socialist countries and they both enjoy unemployment rates that are half of what the U.S. is experiencing today. How do you explain that little conundrum?

The only thing I enjoy about an "underemployment rate" is the day off (without pay) that I get when there is no work. Too many of those days and I go hungry and my bills pile up.

Who pays their expenses while they are underemployed?

In response to taking revenue away from the local governments. Where I live in NY they put the recyclable metals out with the garbage. The trash truck picks up all at once and crush it. Then it gets sent to a landfill out of state. That includes old metal chairs, umbrellas, pieces of gutters, A/C's, old computers (which contain lead among other metals,T.V's, bed frames, old fans, etc. Unless they have a heavy duty magnet to remove the metals from the smelly, rotting food it does not get recycled.

Our recycling days for cans and bottles only includes household cans and bottles. Any other container filled with other metals or plastics are left at the curb for regular garbage pick up.

According to the article, the woman gave him the A/C for recycling. He put it on the curb to get a better grip on it before loading it into his vehicle and he was fined. Really it wasn't about the vehicle he was using it was about him putting it on the curb for a moment, then his vehicle. It was a gift to him but he wasn't allowed to use the curb while having a vehicle. Shameful. He should have said he was taking it to make a piece of art.

According to the city, what's their is theirs and what's mine is their's as well, no matter who I want to give it to.

Yes, yes, we both agree about everything you've said here, now please explain to me how socialism encourages people to not work, given that this capitalist empire in which we're both living has an unemployment rate double that of both of the socialist countries in which I've previously lived.

I don't know you, and must admit that you sound like a hard-working, upstanding citizen. However, it also sounds like you've bought into the fear hype about socialism. Seriously, the reason this is portrayed as such a threat to people in this country is because it threatens the wealth and power of those in control. Given what you've shared here, I can guarantee that you would be doing far better off in a socialist nation. The capitalist empire cares only about profit, and it certainly doesn't care about you (or me, for that matter).

Obviously there is value in scrap. But why should you be able to claim that value? NYC recycles metal collected at the curb.

You should get yourself some thick work gloves

Reeks of entrapment !

Unless the DOS guy put it there himself, it's not in any way close to entrapment. He saw a guy break a law. Stupid law that probably shouldn't be on the books, granted, but he didn't create the situation.

And of course even if DOS did put it there, it's not entrapment. Ever seen the show "Bait Car"? Ever heard of NYPD operations where they have undercovers pretend to be asleep on the subway with jewelry visible? How about when they pretend to be either prostitutes or johns? Or when they pretend to be gun dealers, or in the market for guns? Or drugs?

Police can present a situation in which it'd be easy to break the law. That doesn't mean they're forcing you to do so. They didn't do that in this case anyway, the DOS guy probably just happened to be there and see what happened. It's no likely he'd been sitting there for hours staking out an air conditioner.

And again, just to be clear, this is a stupid law in my opinion. And one almost no one knows about. But that doesn't mean that enforcing it is entrapment.

Hmmm... So in theory there could be a private carting service that pays you for your recyclables? Is there such a thing, even at the commercial level?

Yes, depending on the material and the market.

THIS CITY IS NOW AN OUT OF CONTROL MONEY-SUCKING SCAM STATE DETERMINED TO MAKE EVERYONES LIFE MISERABLE W/ PETTY FINES AND SUMMONSES TO PAY FOR THE MISMANAGEMENT OF EVERYTHING. ITS WORSE THAN THE 70S, BUT IN THE OTHER DIRECTION.

This is a good law but for the wrong reason.

Picking up stuff from the curb should be illegal because of New York's RAMPANT BEDBUG INFESTATION!!!!

it is possible the sanitation worker was angry he did not get the a/c himself . . . for personal use or scrap

This is so wrong.

This sanitation worker should immediately be demoted to the nearest landfill for having no common sense or decency (I really would like to see him get fired). What a horrible human being would put someone else through all this turmoil, for picking up a used AC?

But wait, I thought this was probably an isolated incident by some overzealous sanitation worker that abused the law but then I click through to the original article and saw this, "Last year the sanitation department issued 280 summonses for breaking the law and impounded 136 vehicles." So apparently this more commonplace than we realize.

Ladies and gentlemen this is no longer New York City this is Bloomberg's Police State where the #1 priority is to attack poor people until they're either all in jail or leave the great Billionaire's Metropolis.

"This sanitation worker should immediately be demoted to the nearest landfill for"

for... doing the job our tax dollars are paying him to do. What's up with that? Doesn't this guy know that public sector employees aren't supposed to do their jobs?