Put trash in its place

Ilike New York in June, sang no one who ever caught the whiff of piles of garbage put out on the curbs. Finally, the path to getting rid of those mini-mountain ranges — the bane of humans, a boon to rodents — is in sight. Make it happen. The idea would strike anyone who hasn’t lived in New York City for decades, and become a frog in this slow-boiling pot, as mind-numbingly obvious: Take all those stinky, leaky plastic bags off sidewalks, where they get in pedestrians’ way and eat away at the quality of life, and relocate them to airtight containers, ideally off the sidewalks and on the edge of the street. Back in March 2020, Mayor de Blasio’s city government announced a pilot to move in precisely that direction, following the lead of cities from Buenos Aires to Barcelona.

One proposed rule would require all large new buildings to put out their refuse in sealed containers instead of Third World bag-piles. The other would launch a “Clean Curbs” pilot program allowing Business Improvement Districts to install such sturdy, sealed bins in the parts of the city they maintain.

Yet more than a year and a half later, with the kitchen timer close to dinging on de Blasio’s New York, the rule is stuck and the pilot program is essentially nowhere (blame COVID?). In October, a Sanitation spokesman told Streetsblog that things take time and “like you, we are looking forward to seeing [the containers] on the street!”

Yes, the zero-sum parceling out of limited sidewalk and street space gets complicated. Take away parking, there will be blowback. Encroach on a bike lane or make pedestrians who are already jammed together walk down an even narrower strip of concrete, ditto. Making matters more complicated, commercial trash pickup remains a freefor-all, as a smart shift to commercial waste zones is on the way but not here yet.

But this can be done. New York City’s streets and sidewalks can be made better for people and worse for rats.