NYC’s On-Street Stationary Trash Container Pilot to Launch in West Harlem Next Year

The recently announced $7 million, 10-year contract awarded by the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) to Madrid-based Contenur is a big step forward for Mayor Eric Adams’ administration’s long-term plan announced earlier this year to get trash bags off the city’s sidewalks and store them in containers — something many global cities have long done. However, in contrast to the standard in Europe, where a trash bin is typically shared by an entire block, each on-street bin will be assigned to a specific building in New York City. Upon the May 2025 deployment of the initial pilot in West Harlem, it will establish New York City as the” first major U.S. city to use this kind of on-street container for residential use.” A total of 1,500 bins will initially be provided by Contenur, also giving the city a chance to test a new side-loading trash truck and then study the results to decide how to expand the program citywide. As part of the proposed contract, the DSNY will be able to “eventually expand Contenur’s work beyond the Harlem pilot zone to cover the entire city” — which would make the company responsible for the shipping, installing, and cleaning the trash bins for “some 20,000 buildings and 1.7 million apartments.” It has yet to be determined whether the on-street bins will be supplied to landlords of large buildings citywide, or if they will need to be purchased by the building owners. The city-wide expansion of the program will require the taking over of as many as 2.5% of New York’s 3 million parking spaces; and while the total cost to expand the program citywide is unclear, the city’s solicitation for the contract “does encourage the winning vendor to use a tiered pricing model in which it would charge the city less for each new container as more are installed.” For buildings with nine or fewer units, owners will be required to purchase and use the city’s official small “wheelie bins” built by a North Carolina-based company starting November 12.

Source:    https://www.crainsnewyork.com/politics-policy/nyc-buys-first-street-trash-bins-spanish-company-7m