New York claims a small victory in 'forever war on rats'

No, I'm very familiar with rats, but I can say for a fact that my friend's heavy duty plastic wheeled bins (the common ones) have been on the street 24/7 in NY and haven't been chewed into in the past 4 years. Probably how smooth that plastic is.

Fwiw the pilot program isn't using metal cans either, and apparently is working.

Edit: fun side note, I've seen a squirrel eat a hole through a 2" oak door to escape a basement, so Im not discounting a motivated rat :)

> How often is garbage day?

For general household trash, if you are eligible for DSNY collection, it's two times per week except for some holidays. Recycling and compost are once a week. If you contract to a private garbage collection company, it's whatever you specify in the contract.

> Also a bit wild to me that there's not like a communal dumpster.

Large apartment buildings of course do have trash chutes leading to a dumpster of some sort. But inside or outside smaller buildings, there is no space.

> Some population dense cities also do underground dumpsters, has that been floated?

There is an underground garbage handling system on Roosevelt Island. The idea of underground dumpsters in other parts of the city been floated, but it's impossible because there is too much density of existing underground infrastructure and much of this infrastructure is not mapped, making it impossible to plan an excavation project of such a scale. See e.g. https://dsny.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uploads/reports/fut... (pdf). (There are also interesting engineering questions of how underground dumpsters would work after heavy snowfall.)

The volume gets pretty intimidating; for Manhattan, you're talking around 140 cubic yards of garbage per block per week [0.1 yard / person, 1400 people / block], which would be ~4 of the 40-yard dumpsters (the 8 x 8 x 22' ones you'll see outside construction sites, roll-on/off trucks) per block.

That they're able to collect that much garbage anyway means it's not an unsolvable problem, but going from using that much space once a week, in the form of piles of garbage on garbage day [with the remainder of the time it being scattered in smaller piles in buildings' garbage rooms], to 24/7, means you're losing like 12 parking spots per block, or like half a building lot per block, if you're storing them off the street.

I feel like people would sue the city if they had to walk more than a minute to dump out their trash in NYC. I was there for a few months when the trash bins were being tested out, and seeing people complain about it was… interesting?

I suspect the NYC underground is already so crowded with pipes and cables and under-sidewalk storage areas and other things there won't be much space for such dumpsters there.

Still on the sidewalk. NYC is perpetually full of trash bags in comparison to other major cities (or non major cities)

On the street.

Go to Google Maps, zoom in on New York City, then drop a Streetview pin randomly anywhere in the city.

Chances are very, VERY, good that just by panning, not moving, you'll find a trash bag dumped on the sidewalk.

In trash rooms, hallways or alleyways if one exists (common outside of Manhattan).

Parking spots that currently house individuals’s cars could be used for dumpsters instead.

Room would have to be found.

At this point, even massive dumpsters on the sidewalk would be an improvement.

They had plenty of room for on street restaurant expansions in many parts of the city.

Dumpsters would go where trash goes now. Instead of trash sitting on the street, the same trash will sit inside dumpsters.

There is plenty of space, but most of it is taken up by individuals’ cars.

Hip Hop has shifted as much as America has. The only big 2020s hip hop artist from NY is Cardi B. Then you have to realize she's mostly a pop act -- a majority of hip hop heads don't listen to female artists.