Trash Revolution: Mayor Adams Wants to “Get Stuff Clean”

By Yehudit Garmaise

“The greatest city in the world should become the cleanest city in the world,” says Mayor Eric Adams. 

To drastically reduce the time that residents’ trash sat outside moldering on the street, the city’s Department of Sanitation (DSNY) changed its pick-times to midnight and early morning so that trash is picked up almost immediately after it is set out.

Residents are doing their part to reduce the time garbage spends on the curbs by abiding with the DSNY’s change to 8 p.m. as the earliest time at which garbage can be set out at the curb. 

Before April, when 4 p.m. was the earliest time residents and businesses could drop their trash bags on their sidewalks, the piles of garbage sat from 12 to 36 hours, creating messes and unpleasant smells before they were picked up.

Although residents using trash containers can set out their garbage at 6 p.m. by changing their set-out time for trash bags to 8 pm, the DSNY drastically reduced the number of hours trash sits out at the curb. 

Starting this summer and fall, the DSNY will require all food-based businesses and all chain businesses to put their trash in containers to close down what the mayor calls, “an all-you-can-eat-buffet for rats.”

By March 2024, the DSNY will require all NYC businesses to put their trash in containers.

By the fall, all residents who live in buildings with one to nine units will similarly replace their trash bags with bins.

In 2023, DSNY formed its first-ever Highway Unit to clean highways, increase enforcement of cleanliness violations, and install a network of approximately 270 cameras to catch illegal dumpers who prey on “out-of-the-way” locations.

The DSNY formed a joint task force with NYPD to remove abandoned vehicles from the city's streets.

“For too long, New Yorkers were led to believe that we had to live with trash all around us,” says Jessica Tisch, the DSNY’s commissioner. “In 2023, the Adams administration showed residents across the five boroughs that trash is a solvable problem: if you have the will to go through with making changes.”