NYC to require small residential buildings including brownstones to buy $50 official trash bins
Mayor Eric Adams declared the Big Apple a has-bin city Monday — unveiling its first official individual trash container that will soon be required for all small residential buildings, including brownstones.
Structures with one to nine residential units will have to put their trash into any container starting Nov. 12, Adams said. Then within seven months, by June 1, 2026, those buildings will have to pay for and use the new roughly $50 lidded, rolling cans, dubbed the NYC Bin.
“Many people thought it was impossible that these babies here, the bins, were going to be part of our trash revolution,” said Adams — who wheeled one of the cans outside Gracie Mansion during Monday’s press conference and stuffed a black plastic garbage bag inside.
“We are only catching up to what other municipalities around the globe are currently doing,” he said.
There are plans down the road for residential buildings with 10 to 30 units to also be required to use the official bins or dumpsters for trash and structures with 30-plus units to have to use dumpters, city officials said.
All city businesses are already required to use containers for their trash.
The piles of black plastic garbage bags that can sometimes be seen on city sidewalks and street corners are a rarity elsewhere in the US.
Under Adams, city Sanitation Department officials have gradually taken steps toward scrapping the rat-magnet, garbage-juice-leaking eyesores.
The city first moved back the times that buildings and business put out their garbage, then set the rule requiring all businesses to put their waste into containers.
The NYC bin — for sale online at nearly $46 for a 35-gallon container and $53 for a 45-gallon bin — is the next step in the city’s forever war on trash, Adams said.
The mayor said the upcoming residential trash rule will mean 70 percent of New York City’s 14 billion annual pounds of garbage will be put in containers starting Nov. 12.
“Think about it: That’s over 10 billion pounds of trash each year that we won’t see or smell,” he said.
But Hizzoner’s proud boast of a “trash revolution” quickly prompted trash talk online.
“Only NYC could make it seem revolutionary that they start using trash carts that have been everywhere else for 30+ years,” a person tweeted.
Another X user wrote, “Shoutout to NYC, greatest city in the world, for figuring out Trash Bins.”
Jason Rabinowitz, a podcast host, tweeted, “NYC has invented the garbage can. BE AMAZED!”
