Taking the Trash Off New York City's Streets
New York City is legendary for its hustle, glamor, and grandeur. But if you've walked its streets on a warm summer evening, you might be familiar with another, less flattering element of its character – a veritable mountain scape of trash bags. Mountains of trash bags lining the city's sidewalks have become an unwelcome, unsightly, and smelly signature of the city that never sleeps. This problem, examined in new Manhattan Institute report, might soon be blown away through an ingenious combination of technology and urban planning.
NYC's current trash troubles date back to the late 1980s, when the city banned building-incinerated trash and shifted to leaving bagged trash on the sidewalks. In an attempt to mitigate this problem, the Clean Curbs program was introduced in 2020 to contain the trash within covered, rodent-proof containers. The result, while an improvement, was less than perfect due to the containers' mechanical issues and capacity limitations.
Containerization and mechanical trash pickup can and should be scaled up to manage the bulk of the city’s trash problem. Currently utilized for only 11% of the city's waste, this method significantly reduces the physical labor required from sanitation workers, and allows for more frequent and efficient pickups, a move that can prevent overflowing bins and lower the city's costs related to worker health and compensation. It would effectively end the city’s reliance on trash bags on the street.
The waste management revolution does not end here. The city has an opportunity to turn one of its biggest sources of complaints into a strength by drawing on the deployment of pneumatic trash collection systems. Instead of trash bags cluttering sidewalks, imagine waste is whisked away through a network of underground tubes, delivering it directly from buildings to waste management facilities. Already successfully in operation on NYC's Roosevelt Island and in global cities like Bergen, Stockholm, and Singapore, this technology could redefine urban waste management.
The underground approach, despite its promise, faces the hurdle of New York's complex subterranean landscape, a tangle of poorly mapped structures and unclear property rights. As a beginning point, the city could align the installation of pneumatic infrastructure with existing and planned construction projects for repairs and subway line expansions. By piggybacking on these projects, the city could leverage opportunities to install pneumatic tubes, marking a significant stride towards more efficient waste management.
Central to all these solutions is an emphasis on community involvement. But rather than simply rely on the flawed old method of community meetings, which simply empower a loud minority who shows up, local government should communicate directly with residents through mobile apps, allowing residents to opt-in to new trash pickup options and provide feedback on trash levels.
New York City's future waste management solutions lies in the integration of advanced technology, including mechanical pickups, pneumatic systems, and digital feedback mechanisms. This shift promises to transform New York City from #TrashCity into a clean, efficient metropolis where trash is not a nuisance cluttering the sidewalks but an invisibly managed part of city living.
Arpit Gupta is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute and an associate professor at New York University Stern School of Business.
