( Sai Mokhtari / WNYC )
Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Starting this Friday, September 1st, restaurants and other food-related businesses in New York City must throw their trash into a bin with a secure lid or risk paying a fine. The first offense will set businesses back $50, then a $100 for the second offense, and $200 a piece for the rest, but the Sanitation Department has already been ramping up its ticketing since April when new trash pickup times, as many of you know in New York City, was shortened, when put out time was moved from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM. It has at least doubled the amount of tickets compared to last year, we're told.
All of this, of course, is coming at a time when Mayor Eric Adams and his administration have made it their goal to reduce the rat population in New York City. That's why this is happening. Joining me now to break down the new guidelines and their deadlines plus other sanitation-related news is Sophia Chang, WNYC and Gothamist reporter on the New York City accountability desk. Sophia, welcome back to the show.
Sophia Chang: Thanks, Brian.
Brian Lehrer: Listeners, you can get in on this. We're wondering if any businesses or managers of residential buildings have already experienced what Sophia refers to, in one of her stories, as the city's ticketing blitz. 212-433-WNYC. What did you get fined for, have you successfully appealed or changed your ways, and restaurants, are you ready for the new rules that apply to you starting this weekend? Do you have the right bins in place?
Some parts of the city have also seen those new, what are called, European-style trash containers that are placed right into the street for easier pickup. If you've come across the pilot program, you can call in with what your experience has been like with those. Call or text us at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Sophia, let's start with the new restaurant rules. They were issued on August 1st, but the grace period is ending this Friday, September 1st. What do the guidelines say and which businesses will be impacted?
Sophia Chang: This is supposed to take care of all those trash bag mountains leaking food outside of restaurants and bodegas and coffee shops. Starting September 1st, tickets will be issued for any business that handles any kind of food. That does mean, like I said, coffee shops, bodegas and cafes and restaurants. They must stop using just trash bags for their food and putting them on the sidewalk. They have to use plastic trash cans with a lid on top, and everything has to fit under the lid and it's supposed to help really cut down on the rat population by eliminating this endless source of food for them.
Brian Lehrer: Last Tuesday, the New York City Sanitation Department tweeted out, "It's time for you to be a rat. See restaurant, deli, bodega, or grocery store not using a bin, rat them out by replying here with address and photo. We're writing approximately 1,000 warnings per day. Summonsing starts September 1st." That's a quote inviting people to be snitches, to be rats themselves. Do you think there's been enough adequate messaging on the new rules? Are business owners getting it?
Sophia Chang: Well, the Sanitation Department has a very vivid marketing campaign around all their changes with a lot of rat imagery on fliers. The Twitter account that you're referencing is very active in posting photos of businesses with piles of trash bags outside of them. I think that they are definitely taking a very active approach. I am sure there are some business owners that will tell you they haven't gotten enough notice, but the Sanitation Department did say they plan to continue outreach and do translations for all their messaging into multiple languages so that every business owner gets the message.
Brian Lehrer: Back in April, as we referenced in the intro, the city changed the rule for putting out curbside trash bags, changed the earliest time you could do so from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM in an effort to reduce the time garbage spends on the street and therefore put an end to the all-out rat buffet as Commissioner Jessica Tisch once called it. You reported back in July that so far this year the ticketing has nearly doubled. That's in terms of the number of tickets. Is the city pulling in a lot of money on the ticketing or are people able to appeal? What's the deal?
Sophia Chang: Well, yes, there has been a lot more tickets issued this year compared to last year, more than twice as many. As of the end of July, there were more than 28,000 tickets issued to residents and businesses for improper trash time compliance. I think the general sense is that putting teeth in the enforcement really gets the message across that if people start getting summonses, then they have to pay attention and they have to comply, that just generally changing the policy isn't doing enough.
Brian Lehrer: Here is a ticketee calling in. Isabella in Carroll Gardens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Isabella.
Isabella: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I'm not a business owner. I'm a resident in a fairly small building. There are just three tenants. We've definitely seen evidence of this increased ticketing blitz. It's been, I'd say, about one a month for a little while now that I or my landlord have had to pay, but it's because sanitation hasn't been picking up our garbage. I'm thrilled that we're making changes to the way garbage is being collected in the city. It's just frustrating to think that we're increasing ticketing without first making sure that sanitation is effectively collecting. We just have bags sitting on the street for days at a time and then we have to pay for it.
Brian Lehrer: Hearing a lot of stories like this, Sophia?
Sophia Chang: Well, Brian, it happened to me. I also got a ticket, [laughs] but I totally acknowledged that it was my fault. I put up my trash too early and I got a ticket.
Brian Lehrer: Full disclosure.
Sophia Chang: Total disclosure. I will say that there's always an appeal process if you feel like these tickets were issued unfairly and that certainly, there's going to be a lot of bumps in the road as they change the rules both on the city side and the residential side and the business side. Appeal those tickets if you think they were unfair. I think that that mechanism is in place for a reason and hopefully, fewer tickets will be issued.
Brian Lehrer: Isabella, thank you. I guess she raises a particular issue. I don't know if this has come up yet in your reporting. They put the bags out, but they're not being picked up, so then they get ticketed for the bag still being out. That would be a Sanitation Department issue if it's real.
Sophia Chang: Yes, that does seem like that would be not how the policy is supposed to go, that if you comply with the times and the type of garbage cans you're using, you are not supposed to get a ticket. If there is a problem with how it's being enforced, then that definitely needs to be addressed.
Brian Lehrer: Is there any data showing that the new trash times are being adhered to by and large or that the whole new deal on trash pickup times is working? Are rat complaints to the city down?
Sophia Chang: They are. 311 complaints about rat sightings. Anyways, if that's the only metric that we have, those are down 15% in May, 20% in June. They have dropped compared to last summer. There is a question of whether maybe New Yorkers are just getting used to the sight of rats and not calling 311 as much, but this is the best data we have in terms of rat complaints and it is going down.
Brian Lehrer: Let's take another call. Hugh in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hello, Hugh.
Hugh: Yes. Hey, good morning. I have a gripe with the city. The city seems to be intent on going after the smaller fish when it comes to fines and enforcement. You remember back in the day, they were trying to enforce jaywalking not too long ago and got caught up in the scandal about beating down a Chinese grandfather, the endless ticketing for things like being one minute over on a meter or riding your bike outside of the bike lane, you name it. Now, they're going after the small businesses, the restaurateurs.
What about the landlords? Landlords are making money hand over fist. Equity is valued higher than ever. Even the small mom-and-pop landlords, people owning brownstones, they are sitting on so much equity and liquidity and the city is enforcing dying restaurants, restaurants that are struggling now more than ever. They're telling restaurants, "Here's another regulation for you," and as already previously discussed, sanitation is being negligent in their pickup quite often.
Brian Lehrer: Hugh, let me follow up on one point. Why do you make the contrast even if you think it's not the time to do an enforcement blitz on restaurants, the way restaurants have been struggling? Why do you make the comparison with landlords? Because I think what we're hearing, and we'll ask Sophia to confirm how much the reporting bears this out, I think what we're hearing is that it's both with buildings having to put out the garbage at eight o'clock rather than four o'clock and people being ticketed for that. Do you not think it's both?
Hugh: Is it? Wait, wait, wait. This whole conversation's been focused on enforcement on restaurants, okay? Now, if you're switching the conversation that it's equal enforcement, well, thank you for informing me. I haven't read the article, I just heard it on the radio for the first time, but I'm still standing behind my prior argument. This is [unintelligible 00:10:34] putting on all businesses and so on while they're letting landlords just basically run them up with the developers all over these neighborhoods.
Brian Lehrer: Hugh, thank you very much. Can you clarify that? I think, actually, in this segment so far, we have been talking about both, but do you think that call is reflective of the way restaurants are feeling? Do they feel singled out by any of these requirements like using these new bins with the lids?
Sophia Chang: The reality is they are singled out because they're dealing with food, and the food is by far the number one source for rat population explosion that we've seen in the last few years, so yes.
Brian Lehrer: Yes, although, unfortunately, there's plenty of food in household trash too, right?
Sophia Chang: There is, but certainly, restaurants as a category of business is an obvious target for enforcement as this sanitation reform mindset comes into play. The restaurants are being asked to be on the front lines of this war on rats as Mayor Adams loves to call it.
Brian Lehrer: A listener texts, "I'm so excited we finally got a compost bin at my building at Bushwick, however, most of my neighbors are filling the bin with plastic and styrofoam. I picked it all out the other day, but I'm sure it will continue to happen. How can we do a better job of educating the public around this?" I don't know if that's got to stand as a rhetorical question because I don't know if you can answer it, Sophia, but have you heard that before, people using it for their plastics recycling or disposal rather than rat-attracting garbage and if the city has had to deal with that?
Sophia Chang: Well, I think the city constantly has to deal with contaminated trash streams or things going in places they are not supposed to go. Part of it is just education, just like the recycling education campaign years ago, this is all just I think-- especially compost is going to be a lot of a learning curve for a lot of people because we haven't had a compost mandate, so they have to learn and we all have to learn about how to deal with it and what goes where and how.
Brian Lehrer: John in Williamsburg, you're on WNYC. Hi, John.
John: Yes. Good morning. Thank you, Brian, love your show. Yes, I live next door to a school in Williamsburg. They put out their bags of garbage nightly absolutely filled with cafeteria food and so forth with absolutely no ramifications whatsoever. They never get a ticket, the bags sit out on the sidewalk there, and I've actually seen rats coming out of these bags at night and it's right next door to my building. It just seems to me that schools are actually one of the big culprits of this problem.
I'm just wondering whether or not this new policy is going to impact schools. Right now, you're only talking about restaurants and so forth, but you haven't mentioned schools, which again, I believe it's one of those [unintelligible 00:13:55].
Brian Lehrer: It's a fair question because we've mentioned residential and we've mentioned restaurants. Do you know, Sophia, if the 8:00 PM trash set-out time also applies to schools in particular?
Sophia Chang: I think schools, the Department of Education has its own structure with sanitation pickups, but I will say that the vast majority, if not all of public schools in New York City, are supposed to compost their organic waste so that should take care of the food scraps. Whether that's actually happening is always the question, but that's the policy. The school question is interesting because that is one of the targets of this pilot program for these container bins that are rolling out in West Harlem right now.
They've installed these giant container bins to collect trash bags, and 14 schools have received these bins in the last few weeks. The idea is also to get these bags outside of schools, off the street, and into bins and hopefully reduce the rat access to them.
Brian Lehrer: For people who haven't seen what's being described as European-style garbage bins, what do they look like?
Sophia Chang: Well, honestly, they look about the size of a small car and a bit of what you would imagine a dumpster to look like, but they're designed to be rat-proof, although there are two flaps on top of each bin that you can lift up to put your bag in. The two flaps are like a heavy rubber, and they don't overlap, so there is a bit of a gap between the two flaps, which seems like a bit of a flaw in the rat-proof design. They are about three and a half, four feet tall so that you can throw your garbage in, about eight feet wide, and they hold 600 or so gallons of trash. They're pretty big.
Brian Lehrer: Interesting that you compared the size to that of a small car because you also reported that a Sanitation Department study estimated that some neighborhoods could lose up to 18% of their available parking under this garbage containerization in a city, as they note, with about 1.5 million residential street parking spaces. At the same time that they're talking about making the restaurants pull the outdoor dining sheds in from the street partly so people have places to park in their neighborhoods, they're putting all these new garbage bins in the street.
Sophia Chang: Well, that's the debate about what's the best use of our street space and our public space. I think that 18% is in some neighborhoods. Some neighborhoods will have fewer loss of parking spots under this potential new program, and there are some neighborhoods that won't have these bins at all because they're either too low density. Like the suburban feeling neighborhoods in Staten Island and Eastern Queens, they'll stick with the trash cans per household model under this proposal. Then there are some neighborhoods that are actually too dense like the Financial District or Downtown Brooklyn, and they can't have this container bin model either.
Brian Lehrer: Yes. Of course, we could get into a whole other discussion about free parking on the street being privatization of public space in the first place, but we'll save that for another show. One more call. I want to get a restaurant owner in here. Julio in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Julio.
Julio: Good morning, sir. How are you? It's good to be back and talking and complaining. This whole program, part of it is a good idea, but in the same token, the city has so many tools at their hand that they don't use. First and foremost, we used to have a program of rat sterilization. I believe that was under the Bloomberg administration, and that disappeared under the de Blasio administration and nobody talks about that. Yes, people are probably calling up less. The other night, I was coming home from work. My wife and I own a restaurant. It's called [unintelligible 00:18:04].
I closed up, and I'm stopped at the light on West Street [unintelligible 00:18:08] and for lack of a better word, there's a tribe of rats all over the place, and two of them are actually fornicating in front of me on the sidewalk. I felt like I was invading their privacy. It's always been like that. I've lived Downtown for over 30 years and it's gotten worse. Now, you see these bins that are being put outside, and of course, all restaurants don't have the space. Thank God we do, but they don't have the space, so now, they're going to get the smells of the garbage because they're just going to leave the bins outside. It's going to be an extension, but it's really [crosstalk].
Brian Lehrer: Julio, I think with that rat imagery, you've already given us the most colorful call of the week, and it's only Monday.
Julio: The night is still young, my friend. It's still young.
[laughter]
Brian Lehrer: I will give you an opportunity to plug your restaurant. Where is it? What is it?
Julio: No, I appreciate that, but what I would prefer to plug is that the city has the opportunity of Consumer Affairs makes us all have stickers on our windows that say, who is our carting company? The city should make sure that everybody's doing that. About a month ago, our residential building where our restaurant is, put the garbage out at the time that they're supposed to, after eight o'clock, the garbage was not picked up the next day. We called everyone, the press office in sanitation, [unintelligible 00:19:34], and the garbage was not picked up until about five o'clock.
I personally called up the garage that services us in the East Village, and what they said to me was, "Hey, sorry, we didn't have enough trucks. A lot of kids were moving in or out for NYU and we don't have the budget, so unfortunately, the trash is going to have to stay out there till four or five o'clock."
Brian Lehrer: Julio, thank you for that call. Interesting, Sophia, that in addition to what could be the next big hit cartoon feature-length film, Rats in Love, we've got two callers now on the Sanitation Department not actually picking up the bags till much later in the day that were put according to the new 8:00 PM rules.
Sophia Chang: Well, restaurants and all businesses have to hire their own trash pickup. That's not the city's dominion to pick up restaurant trash. They can issue tickets if it's not picked up promptly, but the contracts with the private trash pickup carriers that every restaurant has to have, that's who picks up the trash.
Brian Lehrer: That's why he says they should all be required to post to their carting companies.
Sophia Chang: That's right.
Brian Lehrer: Just one last quick thing then as we got 30 seconds left. Julio brought up the idea of rat sterilization, which he said was tried under Bloomberg then abandoned. Do you know about that?
Sophia Chang: I actually have been looking into it a little bit. The city had done a very small pilot program in Bryant Park using a rat contraceptive, but I hear that the problem is you need to have a lot of exposure to the contraceptive bait before it takes effect. Then, obviously, it takes a long time for it to actually kick in and you have to make sure the same rats eat the bait over and over again. You can see the limitations of it, but at the same time, it's another tool in the arsenal.
Brian Lehrer: Sophia Chang. Read her deep dive on all this on Gothamist, or listen to her reporting on WNYC. Of course, she works on the WNYC/Gothamist accountability desk. Sophia, thanks.
Sophia Chang: Thank you, Brian.
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