Stationary on-street trash bins will roll out in six new community districts, putting the five boroughs on track to achieve citywide containerization by the end of 2031, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Friday.  

Ina release, City Hall said the containers, known as Empire Bins, will arrive in the following districts by the end of 2027:

Brooklyn Community District 8 (Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Weeksville)  
Bronx Community District 2 (Hunts Point, Longwood)  
Bronx Community District 5 (University Heights, Mount Hope, Morris Heights, Fordham Heights)  
Manhattan Community District 2 (West Village, SoHo, Little Italy, Greenwich Village, Nolita)  
Queens Community District 2 (Sunnyside, Hunters Point, Woodside)  
Staten Island Community District 1 (North Shore)  

The Department of Sanitation will assign the bins to buildings in those districts with 30 or more units, DSNY Commissioner Gregory Anderson said at a news conference.   

Buildings with 10 to 30 units will be allowed to choose between an Empire Bin or smaller “wheelie bins” like the ones properties with one to nine units are already required to use citywide, he added.  

“Building managers, by the way, love these bins,” Anderson said. “They can fill up the bins with trash according to their own schedule, rather than a specific schedule three days or two days a week, and they can also free up space inside their buildings that was once dedicated to the accumulating piles of trash.”

Black trash bags, Mamdani vowed, are “in their twilight.”

“The era of Empire Bins is now dawning,” he said. “We will deliver at least one fully containerized community district in every single borough by the end of next year. And we will achieve citywide containerization by the end of 2031.”

“Now this is an issue for each and every New Yorker, no matter your politics,” he added. “Frankly, the only disappointed constituency will be rats.”

Empire Bins first rolled out in West Harlem as part of a pilot program. Last June, then-Mayor Eric Adams announced that the neighborhood had become the first in the city to achieve full trash containerization, with trash bags no longer getting set out on any of its curbs.   

In September, the city began installing Empire Bins in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill in Brooklyn as well.

In West Harlem, Anderson said Empire Bins “have performed well in all seasons, including our very cold, very snowy winter.”

“Imagine a New York City with no trash bags on the street. That’s what we’re doing, neighborhood by neighborhood,” he said. “We are ending the decades-long era of trash bags on our streets in New York City.”