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.