NEW YORK, N.Y. — Black trash bags piled at the curb are starting to disappear from Brooklyn Heights. Mayor Zohran Mamdani and sanitation crews in New York set the first of Brooklyn’s residential Empire Bins on Garden Place on Thursday, the start of a rollout of more than 700 sealed street containers.
The bins are going in across Brooklyn Community District 2, which takes in Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO, Downtown Brooklyn, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene, Boerum Hill, Fulton Ferry, Vinegar Hill and the Navy Yard. The city expects the district to be fully switched over by the end of fall.
Every building with more than 30 apartments will get the containers, and buildings with 10 to 30 units can choose to join. Building staff open the bins with a key card or a phone app, and sanitation workers empty them with automated side-loading trucks, the first of their kind in North America. Smaller buildings, single-family homes and businesses already have to use wheeled carts, and mid-size buildings that skip the program will have to use them too.
Mamdani said the goal is to cut off food for rats and roaches and to clear sidewalks for people walking, pushing strollers or using wheelchairs. Neighbors on the block said rats have been a constant problem. Some residents worry about losing parking, and the mayor said a fully built-out district uses about 4 to 5 percent of curb space that normally holds cars.
The model comes from Manhattan Community District 9, where about 1,100 Empire Bins went in last summer covering Morningside Heights, West Harlem and Hamilton Heights. Sanitation Commissioner Gregory Anderson said this rollout is not another pilot. Six more community districts are set to get bins in 2027 as the city works toward putting all city trash in containers by the end of 2031.
