Eric Adams’ new rat plan leaves New Yorkers on hook for official NYC trash cans
The war on rats is starting to nibble on New Yorkers’ wallets.
Homeowners across the five boroughs will soon have to shell out at least $50 for new trash bins — as the Big Apple tries to crack down on rodents by standardizing garbage collections.
Under new rules announced by Mayor Eric Adams Wednesday, single family homes and small apartment buildings up to 10 units will have to purchase the new cans from an as yet undetermined vendor in an effort to modernize the way the Big Apple collects its trash.
“As I travel across the entire globe, we’re probably one of the last modern cities where you see trash bags sitting on its roads,” he said at a press conference beside a large image of some prospective cans.
“With this new plan to put residential trash in containers, 70 percent of trash in our city will be off our streets and out of rat buffet lines . . . It’s good for aesthetics on how your city looks, it’s good for cleanliness, it’s good to fight rodents.”
The latest plan will affect some 765,000 homes and buildings, where, by next fall, owners and residents will have to start using trash cans instead of putting out garbage in bags.
They will then transition to the official city bins by 2026.
The official bins are expected to last a decade and will cost an estimated $50 for a standard-size can, city officials said.
The city, since August, has already required restaurants, bodegas and grocery stores to use garbage containers with lids.
Many municipalities in the US charge a yearly or monthly rate for trash pick up while New Yorkers get the service for free.
“Less than one year ago, we stood in front of City Hall and declared war on the rats, war on the bags, and war on the idea that other cities could get their trash off the streets, but New York couldn’t,” said New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) Commissioner Jessica Tisch. “We’re closer than ever to showing the doubters, the rat-sympathizers, and the trash-lovers just how wrong they were.”
The bidding process for a manufacturer for the NYC bins starts this week. The cans will be designed to be rat-resistant and able to be mechanically collected by DSNY trucks, according to Tisch.
The trash commissioner said the containers will cost “far, far less than anything available in retail stores.”
“In many neighborhoods, use of bins for residential trash is already the norm,” Tisch said, adding, “We don’t want those New Yorkers to need to throw out the bins that they already have, and the timeline of this plan is designed to reflect that.”
The administration says its efforts so far have led to a 20% reduction in 311 complaints of rats with businesses now required to use containers for their trash.
