A new report argues the sanitation department isn’t going far enough in its effort to containerize all the city’s trash, noting the plan pushed under Mayor Eric Adams doesn’t cover the heaps of recycling that are still allowed to pile up on sidewalks.
The report, which the Center for Building in North America and the Center for Zero Waste Design published on Friday, gives city officials credit for mandating all the city’s businesses and small residential buildings put out their garbage in secured bins. But it also points out that paper, plastic and glass recycling continues to clutter up walkways.
The group wants the city to eventually require recyclables as well as compost to be put out in the city’s new “Empire Bins,” which are slowly being rolled out in parking spaces to store trash from large buildings.
Clare Miflin, executive director of the Center for Zero Waste Design, said the city was too narrowly focused on removing garbage bags from sidewalks and failed to take recycling into account.
“When you're going to do something this big and expensive, I think you need to think bigger,” she said, laying out a vision where the vast majority of the city’s waste and recycling is stored in bins sitting atop parking spaces. “ We think that it shouldn't be trash only. It should be for both recycling streams and compostable waste. All of them should be alongside each other in the street.”
The sanitation department plans to install those streetside bins in front of every residential building with more than 30 units over the next seven years. Owners of buildings with 10 to 30 units can either request for one of the bins to be installed or rely on wheelie bins that are set out for collection. Landlords with fewer than 10 units are already required to put out their trash in the smaller containers.
Sanitation department spokesperson Joshua Goodman said the city’s approach balances what is possible on narrow streets with the goal of getting trash off sidewalks, and once-weekly mountains of recycling don’t attract rats in the same way as garbage bags, which get collected more frequently.
“For a long time, people either said containerization in New York City would be incredibly easy or they said it would be entirely impossible. Both of those groups were wrong,” he said. “It is achievable, as we are showing, and it is difficult and requires trade-offs, as we are also showing.”
Adding compost and recycling to the Empire Bins has precedent. The ones installed outside of school buildings in parts of Brooklyn and Upper Manhattan over the last two years as part of a pilot program have separate receptacles for organic waste and recyclables. Sanitation officials have said schools require that option because they produce far more compostable waste than residential buildings.
Zero Waste Design has long butted heads with the sanitation department’s trash containerization plan, arguing it’s not ambitious enough. The group could find some purchase for their ideas when Zohran Mamdani takes office. Miflin is part of the 400-person team working on Mamdani’s mayoral transition. The mayor-elect has said he also supports containerizing the city’s recycling.
