I was surprised when I visited to see piles of garbage left out on the sidewalks, seemingly with no purpose other than to breed rats.

This is (at long last) rapidly changing: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/01/nyregion/nyc-trash-contai...

DSNY is pushing hard on getting all trash containerized. Food-related businesses were required to start last summer, all commercial trash's requirement hit just a couple of weeks ago, and residential is rolling out.

You can see this in the large outlier on Feb 12 2017, which coincided with a storm that delayed trash pickup.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_12%E2%80%9314,_2017_N...

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nyc-snowstorm-cleanup/

The bags of garbage are a historical relic. The city allowed trash in bags during as an emergency measure during the 1968 garbage collectors' strike: the metal trash bins were overflowing and garbage on the street in bags was better than garbage on the street raw. The strike ended, decades passed, but the rules were never updated until the last couple years when the city has finally began strongly incentivizing, and in some cases mandating, bins.

That explanation sounds real, but it isn’t. Really weird, why make something like this up?

I did not make it up; I read it at https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/03/22/trash-city-new-york-i... (see "Hooked on plastic" section in the article).

If you believe that this account is wrong, I am interested in hearing the true story, and seeing some sources if you have them.

I think you're being sarcastic, but the purpose of leaving the garbage bins outside is so that the garbage trucks can pick them up, as their contract stipulates that they pick up from the sidewalk and not from inside the (numerous) buildings.

Even in the suburbs, residents of single-family houses typically need to bring their garbage/recycling bins to the end of their driveways. I think the only time that this isn't the case is when there's a special contract for certain isolated apartment buildings or complexes where the rubbish is stored in larger garbage dumps for the sanitation crews to pick up.

There is a difference between a garbage bin and a pile of garbage. NYC has piles of garbage bags just on the street.

NYC has both, because I generally consider compost a type of garbage and that is definitely stored in bins and hauled to the sidewalk, at least for the buildings that have opted into the composting program.

Not being sarcastic. Every other place I've been uses containers (wheeled bins, cans, dumpsters) to prevent rats and to make collection cheaper.

What is the purpose of piles?

> What is the purpose of piles

We like to keep out-of-towners rattled.

At the cost of rats everywhere? I guess it works. At least I have an alternate explanation for why it's tolerated, even though I don't think this is a serious response.

See? You’re rattled

Where would you keep the bins? Where would people park when the bins are out? How many bins would a say 15 floor apartment building have?

New York City only recently got the memo about putting garbage into bins.

(Really!)

> I think you're being sarcastic, but the purpose of leaving the garbage bins outside is so that the garbage trucks can pick them up, as their contract stipulates that they pick up from the sidewalk and not from inside the (numerous) buildings.

Uh. Where I live – on the other coast – we just place our trash in plastic containers. We place them on the street the same way. Garbage truck picks them up and the driver doesn't even have to get out of the vehicle. No rats, more efficient, no people cutting their hands because they are picking up plastic bags and there's glass shards in them. Nobody has to even touch the containers.

> the driver doesn't even have to get out of the vehicle

Does everyone orient their bins correctly and precisely enough for the truck's pickup device? Is the pickup device so flexible that it doesn't matter?

Perhaps surprisingly; yes. Most likely only because the population density of tertiary markets still allows it.

One week of your garbage not getting picked up will change your behaviour.

The purpose is so that garbage trucks can collect the trash. NYC has very few alleys.

The options seem to be:

- Sacks of rubbish left on the street, potentially for many hours (e.g. café closes at 18.00, rubbish is left outside until collection at 05.00-07.00). London has this in some central areas. [0] (took about 3 tries to find this.)

- Individual bins (usually with wheels) for each property, which must be left at the front of the property. It can seem excessive if there's not much space to store them, you end up with a road cluttered with bins. Many towns in Britain have this. Literally the first place I looked [1].

- Almost-individual bins. I saw this somewhere I stayed in Sweden, where one house had the recycling bin, and the next had general waste, and so on. Half as much bin clutter on the street.

- Larger bins, shared between several properties. Much less street space, much less effort for collection. [2] (also London). In many cities in Europe these take up one parking space on each street/block.

- Larger underground bins, which are neatest but presumably the most expensive solution. [3]

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.522472,-0.1188006,3a,75y,50....

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@53.8093732,-1.5728046,3a,75y,10...

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4893475,-0.1432088,3a,90y,22...

[3] https://www.elkoplast.eu/underground-containers

- Also in NYC (Roosevelt Island) have every building hooked up to pneumatic tubes and suck it all into a central collection location.

https://www.npr.org/2017/07/26/539304811/how-new-york-s-roos...

Other large cities manage to have trash bins on wheels to collect trash without making it a garbagefest for the rats and other vermin.

There was a NYT article recently asking this very same question[1] with some background information about the pecularities specific to NYC which make the problem more complex. Obviously, this could be fixed, but would likely meet with fierce resistance from many constituents.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/02/upshot/nyc-tr...

> but there’s also a growing number of bins chained to bike racks and sewer grates to prevent people from stealing them.

This is fucking wild. Who in their right mind steals trash bins? What would one even want to do with trash bins?

As someone who lives in Brooklyn and moved into a place where I was responsible for trash a couple weeks ago, it took ~1 week for someone to swipe my rolling trash bin, graffiti it, burn a couple holes and leave it a few blocks away. No idea why, but it definitely made putting bags on the street more appealing

my recycling bin got stolen multiple times in Portland, but mostly because they are handy totes.

locally, garbage companies (not sure if just some, or all) scan the barrels and verify they are both at the right address and paid before picking them up.

Good thing that NYC doesn't have a large driving population that might as well threaten to start riots if they lose free parking spots

And most of those cities have alleys to store the trash bins.

It's a problem, but it's not such a big problem that anyone wants to actually solve it.