Mayor's New Anti-Rat Trash Plan Is Already On Prospect Heights Block

PROSPECT HEIGHTS, NY — What took them so long?

For over a year, one block on Sterling Place has been showing the fruits of their anti-rat strategies, with street-rat sightings on the decline all thanks to one clever trick: putting trash in a bin, rather than an easy-to-access trash bag, as it awaits for collection.

The group — Sterling Committee on Rat Awareness and Mitigation, or SCRAM — has long asked the city to use them as an example of how one simple thing can make a big difference when it comes to combating rats.

On Wednesday, Mayor Adams seems to have received the message.

Starting next fall, all buildings with nine and fewer units will be required to put trash in containers, according to officials — a mandate that covers 95 percent of residential properties in New York City.

And by summer 2026, those bins must be official NYC bins, equipped with wheels, lids and handles for mechanized collection trucks, which do not currently exist in North America but are being developed by DSNY.

The goal is similar to SCRAM's: get those ubiquitous mountains of trash bags off the street and into bins, ending the all-night-buffet enjoyed by our furry vermin neighbors.

"We're probably one of the last modern cities where you see trash bags sitting on its roads," Adams said at a Wednesday press conference.

"We're going to continue to evolve until you will see a city that the garbage is containerized," the Mayor declared. "It's good for aesthetics on how your city looks, it's good for cleanliness, it's good to fight rodents.”

On Sterling Place, the new plan was mostly well received.

"SCRAM is pleased that the mayor is taking a step that we have long advocated for - get bags of garbage off the street and into bins," the group said in a statement to Patch.

But the rat-fighting group still expressed some concerns in the plan based on their own organizing experience.

The nearly 3.2 million official bins are set to cost between $45-80 and must last for a minimum of 10 years, according to an official procurement document.

That cost could be a burdensome expense for lower-income buildings and their supers, SCRAM says.

"If we got free compost bins as well as free buckets from GrowNYC," said anti-rat crusader and SCRAM member Jesse Hendrich, "why can’t the city do the same with garbage bins?"

The city argues that since residents don't pay for trash collection by DSNY — as many other municipalities do —they will be responsible for the cost, which they say is well-below a retail cost of a similar container and could be even lower after a competitive bid process.

Additionally, while the selected vendor will be able to provide bins to those who lack them by the mandated date next fall, buildings already invested in "unofficial" bins will have to replace their containers by the summer 2026 implementation.

That means on the one block of Sterling Place, where many have bought and are using bins since SCRAM's efforts began in 2022, they will all have to roll their containers to the curb for good once the city unveils the "official" bins.

"I am pleased we will switch to bins, but why force those who already got them to buy them twice?" Hendrich said.

Last March, the groups was pleased to see that the Mayor, in a video he filmed with a top city rat expert, agree that using a bin with a lid was a "simple thing" to fight rats.

But members of SCRAM had to scurry through conflicting information from city officials, agency websites and sanitation workers themselves to learn that residents were even allowed to use bins for trash collection.

“We came across a lot of misconceptions that Sanitation wouldn’t pick them up and that their trash would have to be sitting in bags on the street anyways,” SCRAM member Kamy Wicoff told Patch last fall.

The administration has already rolled out a number of high-profile anti-rat measures, a particular focus of Mayor Adams, who often says he "hates rats," and once made a scene as Brooklyn Borough President, showing off a collection of drowned, soggy rats from a rat trap pilot that had experts shaking their heads.

As critical rodent researchers told Patch at the time: it's nearly impossible to kill your way out of a rat problem.

But as Mayor, Adams has made a move towards combatting sidewalk garbage bags as a way to fight rats, a strategy that rat experts, and pedestrians sick of climbing over garbage mountains, approve of.

In July, the city announced that food-related business must also keep their trash in containers, and hired an official rat czar in April.

The czar, Kathleen Corradi, even took a walk with SCRAM members last May to learn more about their anti-rat work on Sterling Place.

SCRAM said they want the administration to continue on its hallmark anti-rodent crusade.

"SCRAM remains equally vigilant on the other source of rat food: outdoor dining — we hope the changes to outdoor dining will lead to sheds with no planters or floors, which are very often the home to many rats," the group said.