[raddan]

The garbage situation in Manhattan is ridiculous. Mountains of garbage appear every night. It’s not surprising that they have a rat problem. Plenty of other cities have addressed this problem directly. As far as I can tell, NYC simply does not have the political will.

It’s frankly an embarrassment. We advertise to the world the idea that NYC is one of America’s best cities, and the first thing that people see upon arriving is mountains of trash.

[macNchz]

Yes, having thin plastic bags of food waste out on the street for hours every single night is quite clearly the fundamental issue. To me, there's an obvious path forward in removing a few free parking spaces on each block and replacing them with rat-proof containers, and reorganizing the sanitation department support collecting from bins rather than bags on the sidewalk.

The political will is key here, since to effectively fix the issue someone will need to stand up to the sanitation union, who will be concerned that this new paradigm will require fewer workers, as well as to the thousands of seething car owners who will fight tooth and nail to keep their free parking spaces. So far, nobody has wanted to take on this challenge, and so the residents live with filth as the rats continue to feast!

[jrockway]

> seething car owners who will fight tooth and nail to keep their free parking spaces

I was going to say that despite the objections from car owners, we did get Citibike... but if I use that word, I know they'll just replace the bike stations with trash containers. "Cleaner city and no parking spaces lost," they'll say.

[logicalmonster]

> To me, there's an obvious path forward in removing a few free parking spaces on each block and replacing them with rat-proof containers

Putting garbage in containers is the kind of thing that sounds like a great idea at first glance. And maybe that's for the "greater good". But what's this comment about losing parking? The devil is in a lot of very specific details, but I'd have some concerns about the side-effects of losing parking spots being significant to some people.

For instance, in many areas of NYC, reducing the number of legal parking spots means more people having to drive around for 30-60+ minutes trying to find a legal spot, which certainly has an impact on the city's cleanliness, not to mention the safety of the roads (increasingly agitated people wheeling around trying to find one of the increasingly vanishing legal spots). And not to mention the impact on people in stressed economic situations. Does a low income earner who needs his car for work now have to choose between spending time and money driving around for an hour plus trying to park legally, or does he risk a ticket that he can't afford now?

I can see some creative solutions that might kill multiple birds with one stone, but I'd just like to point out that reducing parking has a real world impact on people and isn't something to be undertaken lightly.

[sparsely]

> Putting garbage in containers is the kind of thing that sounds like a great idea at first glance

Also at second glance, and a third if you go look at other cities in the USA and around the world. It works great! It solves this problem! NYC should just do it.

[logicalmonster]

> It solves this problem!

Yes, it solves this specific problem, but what about the problems it potentially creates?

The comment I responded to mentioned losing parking on every block as part of the proposed solution. That's a hell of a large negative for quality of life in New York. There's a lot of details here that are being completely hand waved away.

Now, maybe it's still worth it, and maybe there's good rebuttals and counterpoints to the points I brought up, but the negatives aren't even being brought up and weighed. That's not how you fully evaluate some idea. There's no solution to a problem that doesn't have some unintended cost.

[Spooky23]

You forgot the guy in the $2M one bedroom apartment who now has a supposedly rat proof dumpster parked in front of his window. He’ll be thrilled.

Also, Inevitability, homeless people will figure out how to pop the sealed rat proof door open, throw the trash on the sidewalk, and setup shop inside. The NYPD will laugh, and some judge will grant an injunction forbidding eviction of the resident pending a hearing.

[atyppo]

Lack of political will and corruption are NYC (and by extension NYS') biggest problems. It's incredible how little progress is made here, how expensive projects are, and how long it takes compared to even other union-heavy areas like France. In this case, it would likely require significant investment to create central trash receptacles on each block and require taking parking spaces. Both of which NYC politicans are too pathetic to push for.

[vagabund]

They've recently hired McKinsey to conduct a 20 week study on the viability of containerization on the varying street sizes of Manhattan, and what that might look like [0]. My guess: they settle upon some aesthetically loud behemoth of a trash container that's neither well-functioning nor beautifying, and approve an attendant increase in the sanitation department's budget to deal with the new responsibility. But at least it will be better than the status quo ex ante.

[0] https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-orders-4-million-mckinsey-stu...

[ThePadawan]

> "NYC doesn't have the political will to do anything"

> "NYC recently hired McKinsey to conduct a 20 week study"

I mean, do I have to say anything else? The joke writes itself.

[jacobsenscott]

Idk - are you saying paying your cronies to do a $200,000 / week to study of trash cans is doing something, or not doing something?

[ThePadawan]

I'm sorry, I'll only be answering that question once you signed the contract for my consultancy services, billed at $400 an hour.

[notacop31337]

If you did a comedy show with zingers like this, I'd turn up.

[NovemberWhiskey]

In other cities, mountains of garbage pile up in alleyways or other just-off-the-street venues. Since there basically are no alleyways in Manhattan, the garbage goes in the street instead. I'm not sure the rats care very much either way.

[asdff]

In other cities they provide trash bins and dumpsters. Only in NYC do you just put a bag of trash on the side of the road. My city doesn't even take anything that isn't in a bin that you haven't specifically ordered pickup for (like a big couch)

[notacop31337]

Wait what are you on about? Are you serious that you just stick bin bags on the street full? Where are the bins? What?

I'm not from NYC or even the US, why wouldn't you just use bins that the bags go in? I don't understand, please help me understand this. I'm thoroughly confused.

[bombcar]

Trash in NY is literally piled up for collection.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=new+york+trash

Most cities in the USA have either individual trash cans (suburbs/low density, once a week): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UluH0QmnwfM (ONE HOUR???) or dumpsters/dedicated crushers (high density, can be once a day): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDTrUs6TeNc

[mnutt]

The sidewalks aren’t wide enough for the kinds of bins needed for the amount of trash generated (NYC is dense) and nobody wants to give up free parking spaces to put the bins in the street as of yet.

[asdff]

This is actually just a building code issue. In other cities, ordinances mandate trash rooms or trash chutes for mulitfamily buildings to avoid these issues. One could argue "but nyc grew before sane building codes," but so did boston, or chicago, and plenty of other denser cities that don't have this issue because they have sensible ordinances in place regarding waste management.

I'm willing to bet landlords don't want to make these investments to their properties in nyc, and have more of a voice in local government than their tenants, who are probably mostly indifferent about the issue at this point anyhow.

[bee_rider]

I love Boston and will vouch for the general idea that MA is better than NY, but I’m pretty sure Boston just gets by using the advantage of a smaller population and less density in this case. Although maybe the rats have as much trouble navigating as every other visitor…

[mnutt]

Buildings have trash chutes and rooms for collecting trash; the trash is held there and put out on the street before midnight and picked up the following morning 3x per week. They get fined for leaving trash out any other time.

The issue is the collection point, not the storage prior.

[bmicraft]

Many cities have a regular bin-sized contraption where you throw you stuff in and it gets compacted into a big underground container that is part of the sidewalk. They then either get lifted and emptied of sucked empty by a garbage truck.

The sidewalks are plenty wide for that, nyc doesn't even come close to how narrow some european cities without such problems are.

[mnutt]

Are you referring to some sort of underground hatch that doesn’t take up any space on the sidewalk at all? That’d be very cool, just probably difficult to retrofit the whole city with.

[TheCapeGreek]

I've heard about this in the Netherlands I think, but don' think it's very common.

[NovemberWhiskey]

You live in an apartment building that's 47 stories tall and has 350 units. Do you expect all of the residents individually to take bins out to the front of the building?

[asdff]

I've lived in a big apartment complex before. The invention that solves this problem is called a chute and a dumpster.

[ch4s3]

Buildings here have chutes and compactors. There aren't any alleys in Manhattan and the sidewalks are mostly quite narrow. The solution would be to eliminate some parking to hold bins that can be emptied by trucks but it hasn't been politically feasible.

[notacop31337]

I understand what you're saying but NYC isn't exactly the only city in the world with large apartment buildings.

[jacobsenscott]

You would expect the apt building provides dumpsters

[bmicraft]

Usually such buildings would have a garbage room with big bins that get emptied regularly - at least in sane cities.

[autotune]

And then New Yorkers have the gall to constantly make fun of Staten Island (disclaimer: I do not nor have I ever lived in SI).

[chimeracoder]

> And then New Yorkers have the gall to constantly make fun of Staten Island

Well to be fair, Staten Island used to be the literal garbage dump for NYC, and being incorporated as the fifth borough was actually the reason this stopped (because it's illegal to dump trash within the city limits).

[autotune]

Right, but you kind of lose the right to make fun of it when the garbage dump moved from SI to right in front of your door step, and everyone else's. One fond memory back when I lived in Manhattan is being at a small, classy, cocktail bar that served nice drinks with an excellent street view of garbage bags being piled up right in front that ruined it all.

[Spooky23]

I did live there and on a single family block in queens. Typically there was two pickups a week with people using metal cans in those days. There were plenty of rats.

Where people go, rats follow. If you think that your town/city/building doesn’t have rats, you are wrong.

HN commenters don’t have all of the answers. Garbage bags on the street are a nuisance, but not the problem.

[floxy]

>If you think that your town/city/building doesn’t have rats, you are wrong.

I've never even seen a feral rat in real life. Might make for an interesting Ask HN poll. Estimate how frequently you see rats.

  - Haven't yet
  - Once per decade
  - Once a year
  - Once a month
  - Once a week
  - Daily

Squirrels, yup, lots of them around. And I've seen plenty of mice in my life, and I'm assuming that's what the owls are eating. Beavers? Check. But no rats in 40+ years. YMMV.

[Spooky23]

They tend to avoid people from a visibility standpoint and thrive in denser areas. Outside of big old cities you typically find them around restaurants and shopping areas.

These places spend alot to control them. Google for “rat bait station”. You’ve seen those at any Walmart, grocery store or in the shrubbery on the side of retail buildings.

[lukas099]

I've seen rats... when I've visited NYC. (OK I also saw one in Chicago)

[yunwal]

I’ve been to and lived in plenty of big cities. NYC is unique in it’s rat problem for sure. Other cities obviously have rats, but they’re nowhere near as common (or big!)

It’s 100% due to the garbage bags on the street. If you walk by one of the huge piles in Manhattan (e.g . outside the NYU dorms), try throwing something at it, you’ll see dozens of rats scatter.

[lukas099]

> Garbage bags on the street are a nuisance, but not the problem.

I find it hard to believe that inexhaustible mountains of calorie-dense food would not affect the population of an organism adapted to that niche.

[autotune]

My point was not that SI is a shining example of a garbage free paradise, more so that them making fun of it considering their own problems is hypocritical at best.

[Spooky23]

Oh totally get it. Staten Island isn’t a rat paradise either… but the density of people is much lower.

[rayiner]

NYC is mainly a halfway house for immigrants passing through. It pretty much always has been. A lot of my extended family started out there (it’s got the largest Bangladeshi population in the country) but fled to Long Island or Texas or California once they got their feet under them.