I was surprised when I visited to see piles of garbage left out on the sidewalks, seemingly with no purpose other than to breed rats.
DSNY is pushing hard on getting all trash containerized. Food-related businesses were required to start last summer, all commercial trash's requirement hit just a couple of weeks ago, and residential is rolling out.
If you believe that this account is wrong, I am interested in hearing the true story, and seeing some sources if you have them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_12%E2%80%9314,_2017_N...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/02/upshot/nyc-tr...
This is fucking wild. Who in their right mind steals trash bins? What would one even want to do with trash bins?
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.
It's a problem, but it's not such a big problem that anyone wants to actually solve it.
- 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...
https://www.npr.org/2017/07/26/539304811/how-new-york-s-roos...
Even in the suburbs, residents of single-family houses typically need to bring their garbage/recycling bins to the end of their driveways. I think the only time that this isn't the case is when there's a special contract for certain isolated apartment buildings or complexes where the rubbish is stored in larger garbage dumps for the sanitation crews to pick up.
(Really!)
What is the purpose of piles?
We like to keep out-of-towners rattled.
Uh. Where I live – on the other coast – we just place our trash in plastic containers. We place them on the street the same way. Garbage truck picks them up and the driver doesn't even have to get out of the vehicle. No rats, more efficient, no people cutting their hands because they are picking up plastic bags and there's glass shards in them. Nobody has to even touch the containers.
Does everyone orient their bins correctly and precisely enough for the truck's pickup device? Is the pickup device so flexible that it doesn't matter?