Small-Building Residents Will Soon Replace Their Black Trash Bags With Bins

By Yehudit Garmaise

Will the streets of New York soon look and smell better?

When the New Yorkers who live in smaller residential buildings with nine or fewer units are required to put their trash out in bins starting in the fall of 2024, the City’s “black trash-bag mountains” may disappear.

"The trash bins will be replacing bags of trash on the sidewalk and take up less space,” said Jessica Tisch, the commissioner of the City’s Department of Sanitation (DSNY)

The DSNY is currently creating new street containers that, for the most part, look like regular dumpsters. The Sanitation department is also developing a new automated side-loader truck that needed for the collection of trash in the new bins. 

The new trash containers will likely be placed on existing parking spots, which some New Yorkers think could be worth it if they “do not have to step on rats every night.”

The DSNY chose to start requiring the use of trash bins in smaller buildings, which comprise 95% of residential buildings citywide, but don’t require massive containers for trash.

With 8.8 million people living in what is the most populated city in the U.S, each year, New Yorkers generate a massive 14 million tons of garbage.

Merely putting out all that garbage in plastic bags doesn’t do much to deter the City’s notorious rats, which don’t find it very hard to poke around in garbage left on the street.

 “[Putting garbage out on the street or in plastic bags] is a rat-nutrition program, as far as I’m concerned,” Steven A. Cohen, the former executive director of the Earth Institute’s Research Program on Sustainability Policy and Management at Columbia University, told Curbed. 

Last month, the DSNY also required all commercial businesses to put their trash into containers, starting March 1, 2024.

By the time both residents of small buildings and businesses containerize their trash, 70% of the City’s trash will be in bins.

“This will not only shut down the all-night, all-you-can-eat rat buffet and the odors of stinking trash in the summer but also the look and feel of the streets,” Tisch said.