Large residential buildings in central Brooklyn will soon have to place all trash in containers, city officials announced on Friday.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York City Department of Sanitation Commissioner Gregory Anderson announced that six new community districts across the city will have 100% trash containerization by the end of 2027, including in CD 8, which includes Prospect Heights, Crown Heights and Weeksville.
Businesses and low-density residential buildings, including single-family homes, are already required to put their trash into smaller “wheelie bins.” The new plan covers trash from higher-density residential buildings, whose building managers will put their trash into stationary on-street containers known as Empire Bins. These Empire Bins are assigned to individual buildings and accessible only to building managers.
“In the wealthiest city in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, no New Yorker should have their sidewalks covered in garbage," Mamdani said in a statement. "By finishing the job on containerization, we will ensure New York City’s streets remain the envy of the world."
During the course of the next year, DSNY will assign Empire Bins to buildings in CD 8 with more than 30 units. Buildings with 10 to 30 units will be given an option to either have an Empire Bin assigned to them or use smaller “wheelie bins,” as all properties with one to nine units are already required to do citywide, officials said.
The expansion will use more than 6,500 Empire Bins for more than 3,500 medium- and high-density buildings, officials said.
Trash in Manhattan CD 9 in West Harlem has been fully containerized since last June, while Brooklyn's CD 2 (Downtown Brooklyn, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Fulton Ferry, DUMBO, Vinegar Hill, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill and Brooklyn Navy Yard) is scheduled to receive Empire Bins this fall.
“Neighborhood by neighborhood, we are ending the decades-long era of trash bags on the streets of New York City,” said Anderson. “Others have talked a lot about containerizing the city’s trash, but we are actually getting it done, delivering cleaner streets and sidewalks, and fewer rats, to every corner of the city.”
