Brooklyn Neighborhood Wants Overzealous Sanitation Department To Toss Out Violations

Dyker Heights residents are banding together to protest ridiculous sanitation tickets:

After getting blitzed with $25 tickets for allegedly putting recyclables in their trash last week, some homeowners on 71 St. between 10th Ave. and Fort Hamilton Parkway are refusing to pay.

One resident was cited for tossing 30 “unsoiled” paper plates out with her trash.

Lina Giammarino also found a city Sanitation Department violation posted on her door the morning of Oct. 3.

But Giammarino said she places only grease-soaked paper plates in her trash — and at most, three or four.

“I want to know, are we supposed to wash them and dry them and put them in the recycle?” demanded the outraged grandmother.

. . .

Resident Tony Mastellone said he was ticketed for recyclable materials passersby tossed into his trash cans.

“Should we be policemen over our garbage?” asked an indignant Mastellone, 52, a retired sanitation officer.

Anthony Pandolfo, 72, was hit for not recycling a plastic food container and hanger. One problem: The city considers neither item recyclable.

While confusion over what to recycle reigned, Giammarino had no qualms about what to do. She waited for a Sanitation truck to arrive the morning she was ticketed and asked the crew to inspect her black garbage bag — which she said the ticketing agent had not bothered to open.

“Even the sanitation man said they were covered in grease,” Giammarino said.

You don’t think they have a quota, too?