The vast majority of New York’s household garbage will soon be required to be placed on the curb in official trash cans supplied by a vendor that will cost homeowners at least $45 a pop, Mayor Eric Adams announced Wednesday.
Starting next fall, residents of buildings with fewer than 10 apartments – about 95 percent of the city’s housing stock – will be required to put out their garbage in bins with a secured lid.
And by the summer of 2026, new rules will mandate the owners of those buildings to buy an official trash can from a vendor selected by the sanitation department at a cost between $45 and $80, depending on their size.
The cans will be designed to be compatible with mechanical tippers on city sanitation trucks — hundreds of which must be retrofitted or replaced to lift the new bins, according to sanitation officials.
Wednesday’s announcement is the latest move by the city to address mountains of garbage bags that pile up on city sidewalks, which become a food source for rats. Adams last month announced all businesses in the city must put out their trash in containers starting next March.
“This is really part of our ongoing initiative to continue to have our city as being the cleanest big city in America,” Adams said during a news conference at City Hall on Wednesday. “We’re going to continue to evolve until you will see a city that the garbage is containerized. It’s good for aesthetics on how your city looks, it’s good for cleanliness, it’s good to fight rodents.”
The city needs to find a vendor to sell 3.2 million official trash cans to homeowners and landlords, according to bid documents published Wednesday. The official bins will have two wheels and could reap hundreds of millions of dollars for whatever company is selected by the city to provide them, the documents show.
The cost of the official trash cans will cost “far, far less than anything available in retail stores” and will last for ten years, said Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch.
The forthcoming plan for large residential buildings with more than 10 apartments will feature street-side, shared container bins similar to a pilot program underway in West Harlem, according to the Sanitation Department.
When asked what will happen if the new bins aren’t large enough for all the trash produced by some households, Tisch said she was confident residents would strategize in advance.
“New Yorkers will have to figure out how many bins that they need for their home or their building or their household, and plan accordingly,” she said.
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