They are piled all over New York — unsightly monuments of trash blocking sidewalks and threatening pedestrian safety. For years, overstuffed garbage bags awaiting pickup have looked like an unavoidable fact of life.
Now, the city is rolling out two plans that officials hope will eliminate the problem.
The first would require new residential buildings of 300 units or more to store garbage and recycling indoors, where city sanitation trucks would then retrieve the bags. Many new buildings will have to create even more storage capacity than they need in case pickup is delayed.
The second initiative, which the city is testing now, would encourage businesses to put their garbage and recycling bags into sealed containers next to curbs, rather than directly on the sidewalk. The containers may take up to two parking spaces if placed on the street, said Dina Montes, a spokeswoman for the Department of Sanitation.
“We want to make sure that waste is not on the street,” said Kathryn Garcia, the city’s Department of Sanitation commissioner. Commercial trash in New York is generally collected by private carters, not the city.
The city has been considering these new initiatives for months but unveiled them as the coronavirus crisis has led to a shutdown of large gatherings in New York, and thousands of people have been staying at home to prevent the spread of the disease.
“We’re trying to have creative solutions and to make it so that the city is a cleaner, safer place,” Ms. Garcia said. “I think that everyone is very, very, very focused on cleanliness right this moment. As they should be.”
Ms. Garcia said she anticipates some people will not be happy about the loss of public parking spaces. A public hearing on the proposals is scheduled for April 16.
Arthur Schwartz, a Greenwich Village resident and lawyer who has sued to stop a city plan that effectively banned private vehicles from a large section of 14th Street, agreed that it was paramount to solicit public comment.
Still, he said, he was amenable to the garbage bag plans, even if it will mean sacrificing parking spaces. “A spot or two on a block isn’t going to change traffic dramatically,” he said.
Improving waste removal efforts has vexed city officials for years. Despite a plethora of initiatives — from increasing recycling efforts, introducing food waste removal and testing mint-scented garbage bags — the piles of garbage bags have persisted.
For residents, the bags can be dangerous to navigate. For businesses open at night, the garbage mounds are uninviting obstacles standing between the storefronts and their customers.
The piles of trash bags also help feed New York’s rat population. Rat sightings reported to the city’s 311 hotline soared to 17,353 last year from 12,617 in 2014, according to an analysis of city data by OpenTheBooks.com, a nonprofit watchdog group, and The New York Times.
During that period, the number of times that city health inspections found active signs of rats nearly doubled. One way to cut down on the number of rats in the city to bring garbage bags indoors, officials said.
Currently, the city picks up trash at about 330 buildings with garbage and recycling material stored in sealed containers, the department said. The benefits from this approach are numerous, Ms. Garcia said. “Pedestrians have a better experience, the waste is more constrained, and we’re keeping the critters from any food that might be left on the curb.”
Although it could take months for the plans to take effect, Ms. Garcia said she expects the results will be noticeable. “The experience for New York City residents, I think, will be a cleaner city,” she said. “Particularly in Lower Manhattan, where you’re in an old colonial city where it is a wall of waste on collection days.”
Under one of the proposals, the city’s “Clean Curbs” pilot program, business improvement districts would apply to the city for permission to install sealed garbage containers. From there, private carting companies would retrieve the garbage and recycling.
Both of these possible changes would lead to a cleaner city and a perhaps a prettier sidewalk, Ms. Garcia said.
“We’re trying to make it so that the containers that we end up approving are attractive in the public realm, so they don’t necessarily look so much look like a garbage container,” Ms. Garcia said, adding that designs for the bins include plants and other decorative elements.
In Chinatown, one of the city’s most crowded and busy neighborhoods, Wellington Chen, the executive director of the business improvement district, said he welcomed the city’s plans.
“There are many many reasons why the trash should be off the sidewalk,” he said. For example, oil from garbage bags can leak onto the sidewalk and asphalt and form “pockets or ponds” that “hold stinking liquid down there,” he said.
Closely monitoring the garbage pickup in his district has also helped Mr. Chen keep closer tabs on the pace of business, he said. “My garbage cans start to tell me, ‘Hey there’s a decline in visitors, watch out.’”
He added: “The cans don’t lie.”
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