NYC Moving To Garbage Bins With Attached Lids, and You Will Soon Have To Buy Them From The City

To remove the mountains of black bags on New York City streets, reclaim public space, and improve the quality of life for all New Yorkers, DSNY has announced a plan to containerize all residential trash beginning fall 2024.

Residential Buildings with 1-9 Units

Beginning November 12, 2024, all properties with 1-9 residential units will be required to use bins, 55 gallons or less, with secure lids for trash set out.

If you already use a bin with a secure lid that is 55 gallons or less for trash set out, you may continue to use it until June 2026. After that, you will need to switch to the official NYC Bin.

Learn more about NYC Bin requirements.

Official NYC Bins

The NYC Bin is the next step in New York City’s plan to get black bags of garbage off the streets and make our city cleaner and safer for all New Yorkers.

On July 8, 2024, the City unveiled the NYC Bin, the official trash bin for properties with 1-9 residential units. Separate NYC Bins are also available for purchase for recycling and composting, though they are not required.

The NYC Bin is now available for purchase at a significantly lower price than similar bins at retail stores, at www.bins.nyc or by calling 1-855-NYC-BINS.

NYC Bins are exclusively available for NYC property owners and building managers and will only be delivered to addresses within the five boroughs.

The NYC Bin was selected following the City’s release of an RFP in October 2023 to contract a vendor to produce official NYC Bins. In the RFP, DSNY mandated that the vendor produce bins according to specifications including, but not limited to:

• Cost no more than $50 for the most common size
• Available in multiple sizes to accommodate different types of buildings.
• Rat resistant, easy to use by sanitation workers, and compatible with mechanized collection trucks.

DSNY will retrofit or replace hundreds of collection trucks, adding mechanical tippers compatible with the new bins. This upgrade will speed up collection and minimize the possibility of spills that occur with manual collection. Two sanitation workers will be needed to operate the mechanism, and this change will not affect DSNY workforce numbers.

Residential Buildings with 10+ Units

NYC is also advancing a plan to containerize trash in larger residential buildings.

Buildings with 31 or more residential units will be required to use stationary, on-street containers for their trash, serviced by DSNY’s new automated side-loading garbage trucks. On-street containers will be assigned to a specific building, solely for residents of that building.

Buildings with 10 to 30 units will be able to choose between stationary on-street containers and smaller wheelie bins.

The first district with these containers will be Manhattan Community Board 9, beginning Spring 2025, with further expansion pending environmental review.