Fifth Avenue is getting a facelift with fancy new garbage cans

It's been a year of trash developments—literally. To combat its notorious rat problem, New York City has already set limits on how long trash bags can sit on a sidewalk, installed giant trash bins across the five boroughs and declared that composting will become mandatory by 2024. And now aged trash bins in one of Manhattan's busiest areas are also getting a much-welcome upgrade. 

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The Fifth Avenue Association—which has been working since 1907 to make the world-famous street “a dynamic space of beauty and luxury”—have swapped out aged garbage bins for 80 new trash receptacles from 42nd Street to 61st Street. The $121,000 public realm investment funded 80 modernized litter receptacles, which feature a matte black design, a sleeker silhouette and influences of the beaux-arts style, which is characteristic of the famed avenue. 

But the new bins are, thankfully, as concerned with function as fashion: the receptacles feature a top cover to protect litter from weather and better contain odor—which, especially during a hot, humid summer like this one, is a Gotham godsend—as well as a side opening to make it easier for the Department of Sanitation to remove waste during pick-ups. 

Fully enclosed trash containers and bins seem like a no-brainer for a major city like New York, which is notoriously inundated with heaps of black trash bags awaiting pickup on its sidewalks. And, indeed, other urban centers like Barcelona and Singapore have already successfully made the switch over to such containers instead of garden-variety garbage bins.

Modernizing and optimizing how New Yorkers has been a key priority for the city’s powers that be this past year. “Mayor Adams wants a permanent solution, something like what other global cities have that takes our sidewalks back from the black bags — and from the rats,” the city’s sanitation commissioner, Jessica Tisch, said in a statement, per The New York Times. “For the first time…containerization—in the form of individual bins and shared containers—actually is viable across the vast majority of the five boroughs.”

Photograph: courtesy of The Fifth Ave Association