4 days ago
Trash Containerization Comes to Harlem
Good morning. It's Tuesday. Today we'll look at the start of a pilot program to put trash in bins. It's part of an effort to rid New York City sidewalks of a notorious scene: rat-infested mounds of smelly, black garbage bags.
City officials are calling it a 'trash revolution.'
A pilot program in the West Harlem neighborhoods of Morningside Heights, Manhattanville and Hamilton Heights is providing residents with large, blocky, lock-tight garbage containers in an attempt to rid the sidewalks of messy, oozing garbage bags.
The plan calls for residential buildings with 31 units or more to use oversize bins that can hold 800 gallons of trash, and for buildings with fewer than 10 units to use smaller 'wheelie bins.' Buildings with 10 to 30 units can choose between the two options. Food waste must be placed in designated brown bins or other sealed containers, in line with the city's new composting rules, while recycling, which attracts fewer rats, can still go in clear bags.
One casualty of the container pilot is parking. One bin is the size of about half a car and takes the place of roughly 28 garbage bags, according to a spokesman for the Sanitation Department. The rows of oversize bins — some 1,000 of them in the pilot program — have taken up hundreds of parking spots. Double-parking in front of the bins can cause problems, too, since 16 new side-loading garbage trucks are supposed to scoot up to them three times a week to empty their contents.
Expanding the program citywide would require the removal of more than 50,000 parking spots, city officials said. There is also the expense: Buying enough bins and trucks could cost hundreds of millions of dollars over the next decade.
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