Mayor Zohran Mamdani took a major step on Friday toward moving New York City’s trash from piles of black garbage bags into lidded containers — announcing his administration will roll out thousands more large curbside bins to swaths of the five boroughs by next year.
The city will convert over 6,500 parking spaces into spots for the containers, dubbed “Empire Bins” by former Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, accross at least one Community District in each borough by the end of 2027. Mamdani said the Empire Bins will be expanded citywide by 2031.
“Black bags are in their twilight, the era of Empire Bins is now dawning,” Mamdani said during a press conference in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn on Friday morning.
The mayor first announced his intention to continue the trash containerization push started by his predecessor during an address he gave on his first 100 days in office on Sunday. The committment came after he did not include funding for expanding lidded containers in his $127 billion preliminary budget, released in February.
A view of the “Empire Bins” that will be introduced in more areas of the five boroughs by next year. Friday, April 17, 2026.Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
The effort to containerize trash is aimed not only at clearing up the eyesore that is black garbage bags from Big Apple streets, but also cutting off a major food source for the city’s rat population.
“This is an issue for each and every New Yorker, no matter your politics. Frankly, the only dissappointed constituency will be rats,” Mamdani joked.
Officials said the districts where the receptacles will be placed cover areas including Greenwich Village and SoHo in Manhattan, Crown Heights and Prospect Heights in Brooklyn, Sunnyside and Woodside in Queens, Hunts Point and University Heights in the Bronx, and the North Shore of Staten Island.
Empire Bins, which can only be picked up by specially-designed side-loading garbage trucks, will be mandatory for the owners of buildings with 30 or more units in those areas to use. The containers will only be accessible to managers of the buildings they are assigned to via a key card and an app that will be available soon.
Under changes made during Adams’ tenure, the city already requires small and medium-sized residential property owners, as well as businesses, to place their trash in city-branded wheelie bins. Taken together, those account for roughly 70% of the city’s trash, according to Mamdani.
While building owners with nine or fewer units only have to use the wheelie bins, those with properties that have 10 to 30 units will get to choose between using wheelie bins or Empire bins.
But, while Adams’ administration introduced the Empire Bins and promised to roll them out accross the city, it only managed to successful get them into one Community District — covering West Harlem in Manhattan.
One hundred percent of the area’s large residential buildings have been using Empire Bins since last June, a trial run that has been mostly successful, according to Department of Sanitation Commissioner Gregory Anderson.
Department of Sanitation Commissioner Gregory Anderson speaking about the rollout of “Empire Bins” to more parts of the city. Friday, April 17, 2026.Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
“Empire Bins have been serving the residents and building superintendents of West Harlem for nearly a year,” Anderson said during the press event. “They performed well in all seasons, including our very cold, very snowy winter.”
Adams’ administration also funded Empire Bins in another Brooklyn Community district, which covers neighborhoods including Fort Greene and Clinton Hill. The district is set to recieve them by this fall.
Anderson said expanding Empire Bins to more parts of the city is “not easy,” due to the expense of and time it takes to acquire the side-loading trucks, which are custom-built and have not been used in North America before. The trucks are assembled through a combination of American and Italian parts and designs.
“These bins and the trucks that service them did not exist two years ago,” Anderson said. “We are now building a new supply chain that stretches accross the Atlantic Ocean to get those trucks here, built, and ready to use. That takes time.”
Mamdani said the expansion will be funded through $15 million in the city’s expense budget and $35.5 million in its capital spending plan over the course of this fiscal year and the next.