NYC announces 6 more districts to fully containerize trash by end of 2027
Photo Credit: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office on Flickr
New York City is expanding its trash containerization program, selecting additional districts in all five boroughs to fully adopt containerized trash collection by the end of next year. Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Friday announced that the city’s Department of Sanitation (DSNY) will deliver at least one fully containerized community district in every borough by the end of 2027, with a target of citywide containerization by 2031. The districts will receive the city’s new Empire Bins, which will be collected by automated side-loading garbage trucks.
Community districts slated for full containerization by the end of 2027 include Brooklyn District 8 (Crown Heights, Prospect Heights, and Weeksville); Bronx Districts 2 and 5 (Hunts Point, Longwood, University Heights, Mount Hope, Morris Heights, and Fordham Heights); and Queens District 2 (Sunnyside, Hunters Point, and Woodside).
In Staten Island, District 1 (Stapleton, Randall Manor, Westerleigh, West Brighton, Clifton, and Shore Acres) will also see full containerization, as will Manhattan District 2 (West Village, Soho, Little Italy, Greenwich Village, and Nolita).
These districts will join West Harlem, which last June became the first neighborhood in North America to fully containerize its trash. The DSNY rolled out roughly 1,100 Empire Bins, each holding about 794 gallons of waste, or about 25 32-gallon trash bags.
West Harlem was part of a pilot program, which, though it performed well over the past 10 months, the Mamdani administration says former Mayor Eric Adams refused to fund or plan for expansion.
Those bins are emptied by automated side-loading trucks developed in collaboration with designers in Italy, Hicksville, and Brooklyn. First introduced in DSNY’s “Future of Trash” report, the trucks use side-loading technology specifically designed to service the on-street bins.
Current city policy requires businesses and low-density residential buildings with nine or fewer units to place trash in smaller wheelie bins. Friday’s announcement expands the program to higher-density buildings with 10 or more units, where building managers will use Empire Bins. The bins are assigned to individual buildings and accessible via keycard, and eventually through a mobile app.
The DSNY expects the expansion to use more than 6,500 Empire Bins across more than 3,500 medium- and high-density buildings.
“Neighborhood by neighborhood, we are ending the decades-long era of trash bags on the streets of New York City,” DSNY Commissioner Gregory Anderson said. “Others have talked a lot about containerizing the city’s trash, but we are actually getting it done, delivering cleaner streets and sidewalks, and fewer rats, to every corner of the city.”
During Friday’s press conference, Mamdani said that city agencies have already containerized 70 percent of trash in NYC. The program’s expansion aims to cover the remaining 30 percent, moving the city closer to eliminating trash bags from sidewalks.
“Once full city-wide containerization is achieved, sidewalks across our cities will be clean. Flowers will bloom,” Mamdani said. “But one thing will never change, which is that as New Yorkers, we will continue to talk trash, we just won’t see that much of it.”
The program’s expansion will add roughly $15 million to the city’s expense budget next year and $35.5 million in capital funding over this fiscal year and the next, Mamdani said.
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