New York City has, for months now, been in the midst of a major project: Putting trash cans on the streets that can be emptied into a truck, the way sanitation works everywhere else in the United States. The first trucks hit NYC streets way back in February of 2024, but June 2, 2025 marks a major step for the project. All of Community Board Nine in Manhattan officially has curbside bins and claw-game trucks, according to Streetsblog. Now, the change no longer feels like some little side project.
The effort now covers the Hamilton Heights, Manhattanville, and Morningside Heights neighborhoods of Manhattan. Those streets add up to almost 1,100 bins, according to Streetsblog, which means 1,100 fewer parking spaces — almost always a good thing in Manhattan. As of today, Community Board Nine will have cleaner streets, fewer cars, and it’ll get to see the magic of trucks that can lift up and empty trash bins with their enormous mechanical arms. That alone is a major benefit.
We love cars with limbs
The new bins are permanent installations, rather than something that’s wheeled out to the curb every garbage day, hence the displacement of permanent street parking spaces. Will these get filled up with empty bottles from passers-by? For sure! Will that still be better than how the rest of New York works? For sure. This is a rare Eric Adams decision that actually makes sense, unlike most words out of his mouth. Sanitation workers have one of the most dangerous jobs in the United States — deadlier even than ironworkers, power line repairpeople, and cops — and New York is particularly hard on the people who keep the city clean. Making the sanitation system more rote and mechanical could mean a meaningful decrease in risk for our sanitation workers.
With a full rollout over such a massive section of Manhattan, this new era of trash in New York is starting to feel real. I’m looking forward to watching those mechanical-armed trucks working their way down my little Brooklyn street, lifting and overturning curbside bins as they go. Now, New Yorkers will finally get to see just how interesting all those mechanical interactions are — a new attraction for the greatest city in the world. We already have fancy ways to scoop trash off our streets and vacuum it off our subway rails, so it’s about time that general household trash — the bags and bins that sit curbside every week — caught up.
