New York City will soon require that the vast majority of household garbage be placed on the curb in official vendor-supplied trash cans, which will cost homeowners at least $45 a pop, Mayor Eric Adams announced on Wednesday.
Starting next fall, residents of buildings with fewer than 10 apartments – about 95% of the city’s housing stock – will be required to put out their garbage in bins with secured lids.
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, which can 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 the city’s sanitation trucks must be replaced or retrofitted so that they can lift the new bins, according to sanitation officials.
Wednesday’s announcement is the city’s latest move to address the mountains of garbage bags that pile up on city sidewalks, which become a food source for rats. Last month, Adams announced that 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 on Wednesday. The official bins will have two wheels and could reap hundreds of millions of dollars for the vendor the city selects to provide them, the documents show.
The official trash cans will cost “far, far less than anything available in retail stores” and will last for 10 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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