In late June, I used to be standing at an intersection within the New York Metropolis neighborhood of Harlem, at 5 a.m., surveying a row of hulking grey bins that lined the curb. Subsequent to me, Joshua Goodman, the deputy commissioner for Public Affairs & Buyer Expertise at DSNY, admired his crew’s handiwork.
“We wish it to be iconic, however we additionally sort of need it to mix in and disappear,” Goodman mentioned of the bin. “Finally we would like you to stroll down the road and never discover that it’s right here.”
Because the solar rose, and sleepy commuters handed by us, he defined that whereas these new bins are novel as we speak, the hope is that they grow to be simply one other a part of the streetscape. This morning, nevertheless, the European-style bins are onerous to overlook.
Standing 3-feet extensive and 5-feet tall with gently curved lids, these stationary on-street containers, formally named Empire Bins, are parked in entrance of enormous condominium buildings in Manhattan’s Group Board 9. They’re the most recent initiative from New York Metropolis to struggle rats and hold the streets clear, after the town commissioned a $4 million McKinsey examine that concluded that the way forward for trash administration is cans and bins.
Because the examine, eating places and residential buildings between one and 9 items have needed to get rid of their waste in city-sanctioned trash cans (55 gallons or much less, with a safe lid), in lieu of the heaping mounds of black trash baggage that used to line the streets. Then, this previous April, the town unveiled the Empire Bins as the subsequent section of its experiment in corralling waste.
These sturdy, strong receptacles substitute the mountains of flimsy trash baggage that rodents simply shred with a purpose to entry the nightly all-you-can-eat buffets that we set out for them. Whereas a handful of bins debuted in a smaller 10-block space final fall, they’re now in wider use. The town will consider the subsequent section of containerization after the Harlem pilot examine is full, however for now, 1,100 are unfold throughout the pilot space. The kitchen is now closed in Manhattan’s Group Board 9, the town’s first neighborhood to be totally containerized.
[Photo: NYC Mayor’s Office]
Designing the Empire Bin
Framing the seemingly apparent habits of placing trash into cans as an innovation is the butt of jokes, however for a metropolis that generates over 14 million tons of waste a yr—and stuffs smelly, leaky, flimsy trash baggage in each out there house it might probably—execution is a problem logistically, technically, and behaviorally. Enter design. “Many individuals are kind of shocked that trash requires an aesthetic,” Goodman tells me.
The bins are made by the Spanish firm known as Conteneur—which has a $7 million, 10-year contract with the town to supply as much as 1,500 bins—and are barely modified variations of their Oval 3000 mannequin, that are present in cities like Barcelona. Whereas the bodily design is usually off the shelf, the expertise round them is New York particular.
First off, the bins are grey with grey lids to match the colour of the smaller rolling bins required for buildings with 9 or fewer items. They’re merely labeled “Trash” and have icons of a metallic rubbish bin and bundled plastic bag, together with a DSNY emblem on the nook. “Very simple iconography, simply simple-to-understand phrases,” Goodman explains. Some Empire Bins are additionally put in at faculties within the neighborhood for recycling and compost along with trash, and their lids are shade coded to point what goes inside: blue for glass, inexperienced for paper, brown for compost—identical to residential bins.
Second, the Empire Bins are assigned to particular addresses as an alternative of being for complete neighborhood communal use like they’re in most European cities. Whereas the town has lengthy recognized the burden of its waste, it didn’t know the amount till it performed a 70,000 block examine as a part of the containerization effort. By way of this, DSNY concluded {that a} one-size-fits-all container wouldn’t work for neighborhoods due to the various density. A block may comprise any combination of enormous and small residential buildings; as an alternative, it took a building-by-building strategy. DSNY mandated that buildings over 31 items obtain an Empire Bin and gave buildings between 10 and 30 items the choice to make use of the Empire Bin or particular person rolling bins.
Proper now, Empire Bins occupy about 4% of the neighborhood’s curbside parking. “We don’t need there to be too little or an excessive amount of bin house,” Goodman says. “An excessive amount of bin house isn’t an environment friendly use of our curb line, and clearly not sufficient is unhealthy for kind of self-evident causes.”
And at last, every Empire Bin is outfitted with a battery-powered lock; the individual or individuals accountable for trash on the constructing obtain key playing cards to entry them. There’s no restrict to what number of key automobiles a constructing can obtain. Conteneur suggested the town to maintain the playing cards plain, however Goodman felt like they wanted a particular graphic remedy so “Empire Bin” and {a photograph} of the receptacles is printed on every green-and-white card. “They mentioned, ‘You don’t need it to grow to be a collector’s merchandise.’ And I mentioned, ‘No, I need it to grow to be a collector’s merchandise,” he explains. “The important thing card must be cool. Individuals need to need this. They need to be excited to get it.”
With a purpose to hold the bins in the very same spot, DSNY put in tiny pyramids onto the pavement that maintain them in place and stop them from getting pushed round. Every bin weighs about 300 kilos empty, so plenty of energy is required to dislodge them. Moreover, DSNY, in collaboration with the Division of Transportation, put in flex posts across the bins to make sure there’s sufficient clearance for the gathering vans’ mechanical arm to seize them.
Residents take their trash out like regular. However supers bag up the trash and toss them into the bins as an alternative of leaving it on the curb for pick-up. They will entry the bin 24/7 and don’t have to attend till a particular time to make use of them. This fashion, there’s no want for the intermediate steps of bagging trash and holding it in a trash room till pick-up then bringing every little thing to the curb. “It has eradicated the constructing supervisor frustration round having to be right here until 8 p.m. to place the trash out,” Goodman says.
[Photo: NYC Mayor’s Office]
An Automated Truck for the Heavy Lifting
Round 5:45 a.m., a brand new DSNY truck rumbled up the hill. To service the Empire Bins, DSNY needed to construct 16 customized side-loading assortment vans. The fashions in use in Europe don’t meet the emissions necessities in New York, so DSNY Frankensteined their our bodies onto the identical mannequin of chassis that the fleet at the moment makes use of.
One of many two employees hopped out of the cab then flashed his common entry key card over the lock to peek inside to see if the bins had something inside them. The primary was empty, however the second had just a few baggage in it. He returned to the truck and hit a button on its facet, which awoke a big, automated mechanical arm. It lowered itself across the bin, pinched its sides, then hoisted it 20 toes within the air earlier than flipping it the other way up to empty its contents. Then, the arm exactly lowers the bin again to its precise resting place. The whole course of is automated, however there are cameras contained in the cab that lets the driving force hold an additional set of eyes on the mechanical arm for security and a joystick simply in case they should function it manually.
As a substitute of heaving heavy, soiled baggage into the again of a truck, employees basically simply press a button. It’s a shift that helps cut back the super bodily pressure on the job and threat of sickness, particularly leptospirosis, a bacterial an infection that’s unfold via rodent urine. It’s curable, however typically goes undiagnosed, which may result in problems. “There are two sorts of New Yorkers who get leptospirosis: sanitation employees and canines,” Goodman says. “We’ve perhaps six circumstances a yr from dealing with trash baggage {that a} rat has urinated on, and now they’re not touching the baggage.”
The whole acrobatic sequence took lower than 30 seconds. It jogged my memory of the Snow Plow Ballet, a 2003 efficiency by Mierle Laderman Ukeles, DSNY’s first resident artist, of snow plows choreographed right into a dance. The arm’s swish rise was not in contrast to a plié and relevé. Then the truck was onto the subsequent set of bins—typically the bins are sited individually and typically in sequence—for an encore efficiency, and shortly drove onto the subsequent block.
[Photo: NYC Mayor’s Office]
From Harlem to the 5 Boroughs?
If the Harlem pilot is profitable, the Empire Bins might come to the remainder of the town, although DSNY has to finish its examine earlier than the town decides. For now Goodman and his crew will likely be gathering suggestions and learning how the bins work in situ from residents in addition to sanitation employees.
Some early takeaways have emerged: DSNY seen that drivers typically park over the flex posts, so it’s contemplating putting in bollards between them and the bins to make sure there’s sufficient clearance for the mechanical arm. In the meantime, some supers who handle a number of buildings have requested for a key card that may work on a number of bins; DSNY has labored with property homeowners to get authorization. “We wish this to be actually easy,” Goodman says.
Then there’s the problem of utilizing the bins as the town intends. I noticed a paper bag of recycling and a pair grocery store-size baggage of trash in entrance of a row of three Empire Bins. DSNY has added a “No Dumping” sticker to stop this. “My hope is that long-term that’s not essential and that individuals come to grasp what the bin is,” Goodman says.
As Goodman and I wrapped up our tour, we noticed DSNY’s Manhattan Borough Chief Daton Lewis trailing the pick-up, too. He was excited in regards to the new methodology of trash assortment. “It’s simply superb,” Chief Lewis instructed us, mentioning {that a} colleague who has served in DSNY for 20 years instructed him that the Empire Bins got here 19 years too late. “It’s like a child within the sweet retailer for me.”
To this point, DSNY’s containerization efforts appear to be working. Within the first half of 2025, citywide rat sightings decreased 18.4% in comparison with the identical time interval in 2024. Nonetheless, the vocal pro-car faction has chimed in; the New York Put up accused the bins of “abducting” parking areas. In the meantime, some advocates are calling for extra on-street bins arguing that the fleets of rolling bins for smaller buildings are crowding sidewalk house. Whereas Mayor Adams has mentioned that the tradeoff of much less parking is a “small value to pay” for cleaner streets, it stays to be seen if the longer term political local weather will likely be as open to the shift.
A pair days after my trek to Harlem, I attended a screening of The Upkeep Artist, a documentary about Mierle Laderman Ukeles, that premiered on the Tribeca Movie Pageant this June. A feminist artist who explored the cultural associations with upkeep and care, Ukeles, wished extra residents to worth the programs and labor that hold a metropolis operating. “I consider that the design of garbage-recycling amenities, landfills, water remedy vegetation, rivers ought to grow to be the good public design of our age,” she mentioned in an interview that appeared within the movie. “They are going to be totally formidable, our civic cathedrals.” Since then, the town has commissioned a handful of civic cathedrals to sanitation: There’s the salt shed on Spring Road that resembles a concrete crystal and the rotund silver digester eggs that outline the Greenpoint skyline and are sometimes open to the general public on structure excursions that at all times promote out. The most recent entries to the canon, I’d argue, are the Empire Bins.
A part of Ukeles’s ambition was to assist individuals understand that protecting our cities clear is a shared duty. “After the revolution, who’s going to select up the rubbish on Monday morning?” she wrote in her 1969 manifesto. The reply ought to be all of us, in some capability. In the present day, which means being receptive to the redistribution of curb house for waste assortment. “I don’t assume we had been requested if we wished to stay with 24 million kilos of trash on the street,” Goodman says. “And the concept that we will change it’s, I feel, compelling.”
