The reason why NYC has such a rat epidemic is because they literally throw their trash bags on the street. Which leads to some getting ripped open and leaving food for pests.
New Yorkers are so precious about this. I've heard pages and pages of excuses why trash containers can't possibly work in New York City, despite literally every other city in the developed world-- including all the others in the United States-- somehow managing to master this arcane technology.
Nobody's saying they can't work, they're just saying it's an expensive transformation that involves tradeoffs.
Which is in large part because of the way NYC was laid out originally -- no back alleys where garbage could be stored and collected, in order to reduce areas for potential crime.
If it were as simple as you imply, it would have been done already. Guess what -- it's actually pretty complex, but containerization is a major focus of the current administration. Nobody's being "precious" about anything -- there's no need to be insulting.
(Once you go outside the canals it's wheelie bins, but they are not considered suitable for use in the very centre, for reasons I was never super-clear on)
The Back Bay section of Boston begs to differ. Even with alleyways between the streets, still no trash cans, just plastic bags (that get chewed through pretty much uniformly).
Trash cans aren't viable because of shortcomings in our infrastructure; we don't have alleyways. Large apartment buildings use dumpsters or basement trash rooms, but you can't exactly cart those out on to the sidewalk. Street side pickup is the only option barring rebuilding the city, and a garbage man isn't picking up an entire trash can. Having a truck pick up the garbage can would also encounter issues with space and time. That's how we landed on our current... well... "solution".
Also trash cans aren't foolproof. I've encountered more than a few of the critters digging through our refuse, along with a trash panda once or twice. The bags aren't rat proof either; it's not that they rip, but rather the rats chew through.
Complicated problem with a lot of legacy infrastructure debt.
This is true and also a simplification: NYC required steel trashcans for street pickup for decades, until getting rid of them for performance reasons (I believe the argument was that they made garbage pickup slower).
The city is now bringing back the trashcan requirement, but plastic this time. It remains to be seen how effective that will be (since rats will happily chew through heavy plastic to get to food).
Edit: I realized that I've also simplified: the new can requirement is for commercial pickups only. That's the majority of rat-inducing foot waste, but it's still just a partial solution.
You forgot to mention the union of garbage men that fights against any kind of gains of efficiency. You could have easy-open small dumpsters that are found all over Europe, but that would take work away from a couple guys throwing bags of garbage into the truck.
when walking through some neighborhoods (parts of park slope) i saw almost exclusively trash cans at every residence. At any rate, to say its impossible to implement trash cans just sounds nuts. I'm sure it truly is complicated, but not viable? I don't think so.
You walked through the most expensive neighborhood in all of Brooklyn, home to multi-million dollar brownstones and full floor condos. Try poking at some denser neighborhoods, the problems will become more evident.
even if we're talking densely populated areas, aren't cans just going to be better no matter what? The alternative is literally throwing plastic bags of trash into the street. I adore NYC and I look for every excuse I can to go. I understand that it has very unique issues that few, if any, cities on earth have to contend with. This one just seems pretty addressable. I need a youtube series or podcast about how it got to this point, whats been tried, and why it failed so I can fully comprehend it.
The first time I visited NYC, I was appalled that so many people just casually live in the stink of street trash 24/7. They just don't see it as an issue, strangely
The first time I visited NYC was for a job interview. I wanted to live in an urban, walkable city with plenty of cultural and business opportunities. The trash situation was a primary factor in me choosing another city and another job.
I get that many many people in NYC don't see this as an issue, or don't see this as a solvable problem. As an outsider it is absolutely disgusting, and forever lowered my opinion of the city.
~20 years ago I visited Toronto for a Debian conference in the middle of an outdoor workers strike. I wanted to visit Chinatown, but the heaps of trash bags that hadn't been collected left a stench that I couldn't stomach.
Spadina Chinatown has always been notorious for that. Back in the 90s, it was intolerable on garbage days even when there was no strike. Lots of expired seafood in bags out on the sidewalk etc.
Nothing like rotting squished crabs baking in hot humid 85f summer smog.
> The reason why NYC has such a rat epidemic is because they literally throw their trash bags on the street.
NYC has huge underground tunnel networks for subway and other things. The only other city in the US with a comparably large rat problem is Chicago, which also has substantial tunneling. This gives rats a huge place to live. While trash is a contributing factor the huge amount of old tunnels is the main reason it's so hard to control.
The city can do all the control it wants in the parks but it isn't going to put much of a dent in the underground systems.
It's not really a solution, because even then no one's perfect about using them, but it can help. Rats will chew right through a plastic trash can if they're desperate, and steel dumpsters eventually rust out and create nice little rat doors.
Almost ever major city has some level of rat problem, with underground transit and other man-made tunnels I believe the problem is essentially impossible to solve. It's all about management.
I walked past a giant trash bin in Singapore one night and there were literally 10+ rats shuffling around inside it and I could hear it shaking and banging. Singapore has no litter problem (but the heat and humidity probably makes the trash more delicious smelling) but the rats can find their way into anything...
There's always a cost and a tradeoff. The real question might not be choosing rats or no rats, but choosing between rats or parking. As far as I understand the proposed solution, the containerization proposed would take up somewhere in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 parking spots in NYC.