Something stinks about the city\u2019s new trash bins.<\/p>\n
New Yorkers are scrambling to buy required but tough-to-find official trash cans or face a fine \u2014 but the only company allowed to make the bins has already left town.<\/p>\n
A former worker at Otto Environmental Systems told The Post the company shut down its New York operation after City Hall axed its request to hike prices for the branded \u201cNYC Bins.\u201d<\/p>\n
New Yorkers in 1- to 9-unit homes are supposed to start using these bins by June 2026 or face fines. Gabriella Bass<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, thousands of residents have complained that they paid for the $50 bins but still haven\u2019t received them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe volumes that were spoken about within the contract the city wrote did not come to fruition,\u201d the ex-employee, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Post. \u201cWe were losing money every week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Owners of residential properties with between one and nine units homes are required to start using the bins by June 2026 or be slapped with penalties. The rollout of the bins are part of a sweeping containerization push that covers some 765,000 small residential buildings.<\/p>\n
Otto didn\u2019t get a direct payment as part of an exclusive deal, but the money it was getting direct from buyers was apparently not enough \u2014 as it asked the Department of Sanitation to hike prices of the bins by $25-$30.<\/p>\n
The city said no, prompting the company to roll out of the Big Apple, the former employee said.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s containerization program was a feature policy of the Adams administration. William Farrington<\/p>\n
\u201cI got a call the Thursday before Thanksgiving to close the building, lay off the drivers, lay off the warehouse guys, and have that building empty before Thanksgiving,\u201d the ex-employee said. <\/p>\n
Besides shutting local storage and deliveries, Otto shipped the remaining inventory back to a warehouse in Charlotte, North Carolina, according to the former worker.<\/p>\n
An Otto spokesperson confirmed it closed warehouses and imposed layoffs after its request was denied. <\/p>\n
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Otto also suggested that the city bill residents for the cans through property taxes like other cities do in the US rather than asking residents to order the cans directly, the spokesperson said. That would have cut down on delivery costs because the company could have delivered more cans to the same area each trip, according to the spokesperson.<\/p>\n
But the city took a stance there was no need for a late change.<\/p>\n
DSNY said \u201croughly half of all households in buildings with 1 to 9 units have already purchased bins\u201d and warned households that have not purchased a bin would still be fined. Gabriella Bass<\/p>\n
\u201cThe structure of the program was not a surprise; it was structured this way, with New Yorkers purchasing the bins directly, from the very beginning, and Otto chose to bid on it,\u201d a spokesperson at the sanitation department said.<\/p>\n
The ex-employee estimated the company delivered almost 1 million bins to roughly 400,000 households, a number confirmed by DSNY \u2014 but the former employee believes around 20,000 New Yorkers who ordered and paid still have nothing to show for it.<\/p>\n
Staten Island Councilmember Frank Morano described the city\u2019s rollout of its new trash bins as \u201cproblematic.\u201d Robert Miller<\/p>\n
The city is now warning households that have not purchased a bin would still be fined despite difficulties placing orders online as previously reported by The Post. That irked one City Council member.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t mandate compliance when people can\u2019t access the required product and they can\u2019t get answers,\u201d Staten Island Council member Frank Morano told The Post Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know how this vendor was selected, but it\u2019s clear there were a lot of problems with every aspect of this rollout, from the management to the way they disappeared in the middle of the night leaving everyone without garbage pails and money,\u201d Morano said. He added that seniors and residents without cars can\u2019t easily get to Home Depot, which also distributes the bins.<\/p>\n
Otto plans to keep manufacturing the bins and distributing them through Home Depot, the spokesperson added. But Morano said residents have had difficulty tracking down the product because of limited stock at the city\u2019s 22 Home Depots \u2014 while shipping online could increase costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is really problematic. The city is mandating compliance but residents can\u2019t access the required product,\u201d Morano said. \u201cEvery day we have more and more constituents calling the office saying they\u2019re in this boat.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Something stinks about the city\u2019s new trash bins. New Yorkers are scrambling to buy required but tough-to-find official…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":536157,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,71957,5248,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,80,7835,44966,67,586,132,5230,68,1154,2969],"class_list":["post-536156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-department-of-sanitation","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-politics","tag-rats","tag-sanitation-department","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-news","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115942415601341411","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}