IBC tote recycling on New York Avenue NE

Yards, not towers

Most of the District’s production, distribution and repair land is in Ward 5, near railroad facilities, the Red Line and New York Avenue. A tote here is more likely to come from a contractor’s lot, a utility depot or a wholesale warehouse than from an office building.

What the yards empty

The table lists patterns we expect, not totes we have counted.

The staging problem

Yards have space but not roofs. Read storing empties outside before a tote sits in the rain. Rainwater in a cage that is not closed makes a heel.

Three miles of freight and commuting

The corridor runs from Florida Avenue NE to South Dakota Avenue NE and is both a freight route and a commuter route. Trucks and commuters share the same lanes, so the hour at which a tote is ready matters. A site that can stage totes at the curb outside rush hour is easier to reach than one that cannot.

The Office of Planning describes the jobs here as warehousing, utility and service work, and wholesale and construction yards are the other lines of work.

What a yard should tell us

• Which cross street the gate is on.
• Whether the totes are under cover.
• Whether a forklift is on site.
• Whether the label is still readable after a season outside.

Winter and weather on the corridor

Totes left in a yard through a winter face freezing water in the bottle and ice on the cage. A bottle with water in it can crack as it freezes, which turns a good tote into a damaged one. A yard on the corridor that stages empties for weeks should empty any rainwater, close the caps and note the date of the last check.

A site on the avenue

Say which block the yard is on, which gate the totes leave from and who holds the keys. A corridor where the yards sit shoulder to shoulder makes the nearest cross street worth naming.

Asking from the corridor

New York Avenue NE uses ZIP codes 20002 and 20018.