Crews Clean Up Times Square After New Year's Celebration
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- Party's over. Time to clean up.
Sanitation workers rolled into Times Square shortly after the ball dropped Wednesday to begin picking up after revelers who gathered to usher-in the new year.
PHOTOS: New Year's Eve In Times Square
Hundreds of thousands of people packed Times Square for the annual celebration. When the shimmering crystal ball dropped, a ton of confetti was released into the cheering crowd to usher in 2014.
But all that fun makes for a lot of garbage. Last year, the Department of Sanitation removed 50.84 tons of debris. The total for this year wasn't yet available.
Cleanup crews got to work clearing the confetti paper, pizza boxes, streamers, popped balloons and empty soda bottles littered on the sidewalks and push them into the street.
The city's Sanitation Department had more than 150 workers on duty, along with about 40 extra members of the Times Square Alliance who helped corral refuse.
Sanitation crews worked quickly through the night.
"By 8 a.m., you'll never realize we had the largest party in the world here,'' said Alliance sanitation director Joe Costarella said.
He was right. The streets had returned to normal by late Wednesday morning.
If you're looking for a way to recap all the craziness of the Times Square celebration, check out this YouTube video featuring a time lapse of the night's events.
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