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The scene is almost identical, regardless of which borough you're in within New York City. Narrow sidewalks lined with garbage bags and other large items await collection by sanitation crews and trucks. Large rodents find shelter in makeshift plastic homes, scavenging discarded scraps—an all-too-familiar sight for New Yorkers. The city that never sleeps has a bigger problem than its flashing lights and noisy streets: it's the trash left on the sidewalks.
In a city of over 8.5 million residents, sidewalk trash has become a collective issue. Why has New York City ended up this way? Urban designers, politicians, and city workers agree that the city's methods for waste generation, sorting, transportation, and recycling (over 12,000 tons daily) have become outdated and inefficient. Other parts of the world, including major cities in France, South Korea, and the Netherlands, use street-level sorting bins and containers to keep public spaces clean and improve waste collection efficiency. Paris, with a population density similar to Manhattan, quickly introduced large bins for recyclable items on the streets. After piloting 40 units, the city found the program successful and subsequently ordered thousands more to expand the initiative citywide, aiming for a more significant impact. New York City needs to take similar large-scale actions.
However, not all aspects are failures, as some communities and neighborhoods have succeeded in managing waste. Roosevelt Island in New York City has used pneumatic tubes and compactors to store and transport waste for the past 50 years. The small Battery Park City neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, overseen by a state agency, also employs compactors to keep streets trash-free.
More than two years after its announcement, the "Clean Curbs" initiative is now being rolled out, with small-scale pilot programs being introduced citywide, starting with one of the city's busiest areas, Times Square. Additionally, just earlier this week, the city announced a new policy aimed at reducing trash output by limiting the time residents can put out garbage at night. Currently, trash can be put out as early as 4 p.m., but the new policy proposes no trash to be set out until 8 p.m., after most people have returned home. However, those with access to sealed containers can still put out trash at 6 p.m. This policy comes in response to a rise in street trash complaints, which increased to nearly 18,000 from 13,000 in the first six months of 2022.
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