It was midnight in Manhattan last November, and Russell Shepard Jr., a veteran wideout and special teams ace with the New York Giants, had just finished dinner with his wife, Marian, at Jue Lan Club, their favorite Chinese spot in Chelsea.
As their Uber driver chauffeured the Shepards home to their apartment in New Jersey, Russell tried to wrap his mind around what he was seeing on each city block: garbage, mounds and mounds of garbage. The next day was trash day, and the city’s waste— stuffed into black and clear plastic bags—awaited sanitation workers.
“I had never seen that much trash in my f---ing life,” he says.