Dozens of the city’s new space-age garbage containers crash-landed in Brooklyn over the last week, marking the latest move by the sanitation department to eradicate mountains of trash bags from sidewalks.
The large, gray bins made by the Spanish company Contenur are a common sight in parts of Upper Manhattan, where the sanitation department has rolled them out over the last year as part of a pilot program. Now, 76 more of the containers have been installed outside 19 schools in Brooklyn's Community Board 2, which includes neighborhoods like Fort Greene, Clinton Hill and Downtown Brooklyn.
In the coming months, officials plan to place them in parking spaces outside of large residential buildings in the area.
“ Usually it's a mess of trash and it's just really nasty and smelly over here,” said Jenny DeMelo, 40, a chef who lives in the neighborhood. “I like it. It’s much better.”
DeMelo said she wants the bins on her block, even if it means losing parking.
It’s the first time the new bins have been deployed outside of Manhattan.
The rollout comes after the sanitation department under Mayor Eric Adams has also required all businesses and small residential buildings to put out their trash in containers, which officials have credited with a reduction in rat sightings across the five boroughs.
Sanitation department officials said they’re working to bring the bins to other schools in Brooklyn's Community Board 2 this fall and that residential buildings in the district with more than 30 units will be assigned bins.
Owners of buildings in the area with 10 to 30 units will be able to choose to use an Empire Bin or rely on the use of city-sanctioned wheeled trash bins to put out garbage.
Nazarah Celestine said the bins taking up parking spaces in her neighborhood made her reconsider her plan to buy a car for her 25th birthday.
“ I feel like it's more cleaner when it comes to, you know, rats,” she said. “But the parking spaces is a problem.”
She added, “Now it just makes me think, if there's no parking spots, where am I going to park in the first place?”
The sanitation department plans to install the bins on streets across the city. But officials are first conducting an extensive environmental review that could push back to full rollout until 2032, planning documents show.
The city’s new special side-loading trucks will begin servicing the streetside bins in Brooklyn Tuesday night, according to sanitation department spokesperson Joshua Goodman.
