NYC Mayor Adams, sanitation commissioner roll out expanded trash container efforts to residences as part of war on rats

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams and Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch rolled out a new policy Wednesday requiring 95% of the city’s residential building owners put out trash for street pick-up in containers — the first such mandate on city residences during Adams’ tenure and another new strategic offense in the administration’s war on rats.

The approximately 765,000 properties governed by the policy will cover any residential building with nine or fewer units and include single-family homes, smaller tenements and townhouses that have been subdivided into separate apartments.

“Containerization is probably one of the largest changes to New York City’s streetscape in a generation,” Tisch told the Daily News. “It’s not something that’s happening over ten years or twenty years. It’s happening now, very quickly.”

The new residential trash policy announced Wednesday is part of the city’s growing escalation in its war on rats. It’s also part of a broader push to eventually eliminate the ubiquitous presence of black garbage bags on city streets — and replace them with standard-sized, rat-resistant containers. Since Adams has taken office, he and Tisch have changed trash set-out times in an effort to cut off rats’ food supplies, and they’ve announced that all food-related businesses would have to use containers when setting out trash, a policy they expanded on last month when the two announced that requirement would also apply to all businesses.

The results so far, according to Tisch, are positive. Rat complaints to the city’s 311 helpline are down 20% compared to last year, and, according to Tisch, businesses now required to set out their trash in containers have for the most part complied with the new rules.

As part of their announcement Wednesday, Adams and Tisch said the new requirements for residential buildings using secure containers would take effect by the fall of 2024, and that by the summer of 2026, the building owners covered will have to use official “NYC Bins.” Those bins, they said, will be available through a vendor selected through a public bidding process that starts Wednesday.

According to the mayor, the latest policy will translate into nearly three-fourths of all city buildings using containers.

“Our administration is winning the war on rats, and we are keeping up the fight,” he said. “With this new plan to put residential trash in containers, 70 percent of buildings in the city will no longer dump black bags on the street every afternoon.”

The ultimate goal is to reach 100%, though, and to that end, Tisch said plans are in the works to expand containerization policies to larger residential buildings.

Currently, the city is running a pilot program in upper Manhattan requiring containers be put out on streets for higher-density residences and schools in Hamilton Heights. Just when that will expand to other parts of the city is unclear.

Tisch wouldn’t say what the exact timeframe is for that expansion, but said there would be more to say about it “soon.”

“Everyday, between residences and businesses, we leave 44 million pounds of trash bags on New York City’s curbs,” Tisch said. “We have been on a journey to containerize all of it and basically catch up with the rest of the world. New York City is one of the very few remaining cities in the world that just allows the trash bags to sit out on the streets.”