By Forum Staff
Mayor Eric Adams and City Department of Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch on Thursday made two major announcements that they pledged will help get all of the five boroughs’ trash off the streets and into secure, rodent-resistant containers, once and for all.
The two announcements—a new, automated, side-loading garbage truck and a new data-driven containerization strategy—taken together represent the largest single turning point in the ongoing effort to make the Big Apple the cleanest major city in the country, and affirm a commitment in Adams’ 2024 State of the City address to set NYC on the course to store all trash put out for pickup in containers.
The all-new, automated, side-loading garbage truck removes a major barrier to containerizing trash from high-density residential buildings. DSNY’s 2023 “Future of Trash” report found that this type of truck is needed to service the stationary on-street containers that high-density buildings will use to containerize their trash. But less than one year ago, industry experts estimated that development of this prototype truck would take up to five years. The truck unveiled on Thursday will also allow for substantially faster collection than manual pick-up. The rapid development of this prototype will be followed by substantial testing and training.
“New Yorkers have been clear: they’ve had enough of the black bags occupying our sidewalks, enough of the oozing garbage juice, and enough of being told that other global cities can have something that we can’t,” Tisch said.
Adams on Thursday outlined a new strategy for determining the type and size of containers that will be used for buildings of different sizes. Under this model, buildings with 31 or more residential units will be required to use stationary, on-street containers for their trash, serviced by the new automated side-loading garbage truck described above. Those on-street containers will be assigned to a specific building, solely for residents of that building. Buildings with 10 to 30 units will be able to choose between stationery on-street containers and smaller wheelie bins. Buildings with one to nine residential units will be required to put their trash in individual wheelie bins starting this fall, with the first-ever official NYC Bins available for use at that time and required by all residential units with one to nine units approximately two years later, in the summer of 2026. This model was informed by a volumetric analysis of how much trash buildings of different sizes produce, on average.
“Today marks an historic win in the war on trash,” said Assemblymember Jenifer Rajkumar (D-Woodhaven). “Four years ahead of schedule, we are taking major strides toward citywide waste containerization, launching automated side-loading collection trucks and using data models to rightsized containers. Once we containerize waste, we rid our streets of the unsightly mountains of garbage bags where rats feast away, instead securing those bags in rodent-proof containers. Through the dedication of Mayor Adams and Sanitation Commissioner Tisch, we will enjoy a city where streets are immaculate, trash is out of sight, and rats are begging for food.”
