NYC budget includes funding for rat proof trash cans

New York City is developing new rat-proof trash cans as part of a new multi-million dollar initiative in the record $101 billion budget.

“No matter where we go, people are talking about trash. Trash on our streets, trash on our roadways,” Mayor Eric Adams said Monday during a Bronx-based press conference.

“We are going to ensure the emptying of the trash bins. We’re making investments in cleanliness in this city never before carried out.”

The Big Apple’s budget includes $22 million in new funding for litter basket services, with Adams promising the city’s approximately 23,000 trash bins will be emptied “50,000 times more” than ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration. 

“We are developing a brand new litter basket for New York City,” said the city Sanitation Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

“The mesh baskets have been around since the 60s and the 70s, a really long time, and notably they are not rat-proof. They have holes all over them,” she said.

“Some of the funding for rat mitigation will go to replacing the mesh litter baskets with the new rat-proof litter basket of the future,” she added, noting the baskets are expected to be deployed onto the streets as early as this year. 

The de Blasio administration slashed the DSNY’s budget as part of cutbacks made in response to the coronavirus pandemic’s hit on city revenues. The cuts impacted street cleaning, including weekday basket truck pick-up.

Tisch said the cuts led to a massive increase in citywide 311 complaints for overflowing litter baskets — from 58 by Feb. 2020 to 790 by July of 2020.

“The numbers tell a shocking story, but they also show our cleaning strategies work when we have the resources at our disposal to deploy them,” she said.

The DSNY will return to street cleaning five days a week starting July 5.

The new funding also includes:

• $7.5 million for “Precision Cleaning” initiatives to target illegal dumping and litterbugs
• $4.5 million for cleaning vacant lots and more money for the Sanitation Department’s “Lot Cleaning Unit”