Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll find out why today is another milestone in the effort to make the city less desirable to rats. We’ll also get details on F.B.I. searches of two houses owned by a close aide to Mayor Eric Adams.
Today, city businesses that have not already taken up arms in the battle against trash must do so.
The required weapon is a bin with a secure lid. All businesses must put their trash in such containers from now on. No longer can they leave their trash out in the open in plastic bags.
Food-related businesses — restaurants, bars, delis, bodegas, grocery stores, wholesalers and catering companies — have had to use containers since last August. The Department of Sanitation said those groups accounted for 20 percent of city businesses but by far the largest portion of the trash that attracts rats.
Chain stores with five or more locations became subject to a similar trash containerization rule in September. That took in two of the most ubiquitous components of New York’s streetscape, pharmacies and banks.
Today, all other commercial establishments must follow suit. The sanitation commissioner, Jessica Tisch, said it was a monumental step because 50 percent of the trash in New York City would now go into containers. (The other 50 percent is residential garbage.)
“It’s epic,” Tisch said, referring to today as “trash revolution day.”
“For decades, major cities around the world have been putting their trash in wheelie bins or other types of containers,” she said, “and New York City just hasn’t. It’s such a basic thing for so many reasons — the look and feel of the streets, odors in the summer, the rats. We have 44 million pounds of trash on the streets every day, and then we wonder why there’s a rat problem.”
For businesses that had not been covered by trash container rules until now, there will be a one-month grace period. Enforcement agents will issue warnings that will look like violations, except that no fines will be imposed yet. Then, businesses with trash that is not in containers will face a $50 fine the first time they are cited, a $100 fine the second time and a $200 fine for any subsequent citations.
Tisch said on Thursday that containerization had already made a difference. Based on calls to 311, rat sightings declined 6 percent from April to the end of 2023 — when the department changed the time when businesses could put trash at the curb, which prompted some to get containers — compared with the same nine months in 2022. She also said that in a 10-block area of West Harlem, rat complaints dropped 68 percent from September through the end of 2023, compared with the same period in 2022.
The food-related businesses have been subject to fines since September and the chain stores since October. They, too, had a monthlong grace period before the Sanitation Department began collecting fines. Tisch said that 28,000 warnings had been issued in the last six months, but only 6,000 summonses — a sign, she said, that the message about putting trash in containers had gotten through.
Still, Tisch said she had sent letters to the chief executives of three large chains — CVS, Dollar Tree and Walgreens — last month, along with photographs of 30 stores that had been given summonses since the beginning of the year. “In the case of CVS,” she said, “we’ve started to see great compliance.” (The three companies did not respond to messages seeking comment on Thursday.)
Commercial trash is handled separately from residential trash, which the city collects. Private hauling companies take most of the trash from businesses. Separately, the city is asserting control over private haulers to make pickups safer for pedestrians and workers.
The city is also moving toward containerizing residential trash. Last month, Mayor Eric Adams showed off a prototype of the city’s garbage truck of the future, a side-loader that can lift the extra-wide trash bins that the city will soon introduce for use by large apartment buildings. Tisch said she expected to start a pilot program, with newly delivered trucks picking up trash left in containers, as early as the spring or summer of 2025.
“The city is absolutely going in the right direction,” said Liz Picarazzi, who runs Citibin, a company that supplies trash containers, “but the implementation for small businesses is really difficult.” Wheelie bins take up space in basements. And many stores do not have a side wall or a rear wall on an alley where bins can be anchored, she said.
Christine Noh, who owns two sneaker and apparel stores in the Bronx and one in Washington Heights, said containerizing trash has been difficult.
“We bought receptacles,” she said. “They did not last a week. They were stolen.”
She said she called the Sanitation Department. “It seemed like my only alternative was to replace the bins with a frequency that would become burdensome,” she said. “These things are not necessarily cheap. A decent one is close to $100, if not more.”
She resorted to taking trash from her New York stores to her warehouse in Secaucus, N.J. The truck that carries merchandise to stores from the warehouse picks up the trash at the three stores, she said.
Tisch said she had not considered stolen containers “a chronic problem” and that business owners could always go to the police.
Weather
Enjoy a sunny day with a high in the low 40s. Expect a chance of rain at night, with temperatures steady in the 40s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until March 24 (Purim).
The latest New York news
F.B.I. searches houses owned by an Adams adviser
Federal agents searched two houses owned by a close aide to Mayor Eric Adams, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. They said the searches were part of an investigation being conducted by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn.
The houses belong to Winnie Greco, who was a prominent fund-raiser for Adams’s campaign in 2021 and has worked at City Hall as the mayor’s director of Asian affairs since he took office.
My colleagues William K. Rashbaum and Emma G. Fitzsimmons write that it was unclear what the investigation was focused on or whether it was related to Adams, who has been the subject of a separate criminal inquiry by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan.
An F.B.I. spokesman said that the bureau “was conducting law enforcement activity in the vicinity” of Greco’s houses in the Pelham Bay neighborhood of the Bronx but declined to elaborate. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn said he had no comment.
Fabien Levy, a spokesman for Adams, said on Thursday that Greco was on leave from her City Hall job. “Our administration will always follow the law,” said Levy, who noted that Adams had not been accused of wrongdoing, “and we always expect all our employees to adhere to the strictest ethical guidelines.”
METROPOLITAN diary
Empty seat
Dear Diary:
I was on the subway one day, and the train wasn’t very crowded. I happily found a seat, and there was an empty one next to me.
At the next stop, a woman who was maybe in her 60s got on and saw the empty seat. She walked over, turned and lowered herself down carefully — right onto my lap.
