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NYC installs 'pizza box-only' bins at some parks to reduce trash overflow and rats
By
Giulia Heyward
Published Aug 30, 2024
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Stephen Rex Brown / Gothamist
By
Giulia Heyward
Published Aug 30, 2024
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Eating a slice or two in the park is a quintessential New York City experience. But when pizza boxes are forcibly jammed into park trash bins — or left on top of them — crust and cheese remnants can end up feeding the city’s persistent rat population and making public space grimier.
A new bin designed to accommodate neatly stacked pizza boxes and keep the city’s green spaces a little cleaner is coming to select parks across the five boroughs just in time for Labor Day weekend, according to the parks department.
The problem the bins aim to solve?
“It is literally trying to fit a square object in a round hole, and it often doesn’t work,” said Mark Focht, the department’s deputy commissioner and chief operating officer, alluding to oily pizza boxes disposed of at the parks’ normal bins.
The six new pizza box-shaped bins feature a red-and-white pattern on the outside — a nod to tablecloths at old-school pizza joints — and language stating "empty pizza boxes only." Parks officials are placing them next to traditional trash and recycling bins and say discarded pizza boxes will be collected like other garbage.
The first of the pizza-focused bins was put in Father Demo Square in Greenwich Village, across from a Joe’s Pizza location, earlier this month. The rest will be installed by Friday at Loreto Playground in the Bronx, Sobelsohn Park Playground in Queens, Jennifer’s Playground on Staten Island and Saratoga Park in Brooklyn, which is getting two bins, officials said.
They retail for roughly $950 each, according to Focht. More could come to other parts of the city, depending on how the newly installed ones fare.
But they aren’t the first pizza box-shaped bins the city’s parkgoers might have seen. The Central Park Conservancy installed a similar bin for recycling pizza boxes as part of a pilot program in the Manhattan green space earlier this year, NY1 reported.
Adam Ganser, who heads the advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks, said the new bins were “creative in light of what New Yorkers need right now.”
“You’re talking about the loss of roughly 800 staffing lines in the parks department, many of those are people who would be out and about cleaning up our city’s parks and bathrooms, so it’s been a palpable difference for New Yorkers and their parks,” Ganser said, referring to recent budget cuts. Some cuts were restored in the final budget deal that Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council struck in June.
Other steps the city is taking to combat trash overflow and rats include a volunteer “Rat Academy” training program for rodent mitigation as well as new rules for street trash bins used by residents and businesses. Next month, the city will host its first-ever “Rat Summit” with experts from across the country.
“Pizza is everywhere in New York — and pizza boxes are everywhere — so this helps people dispose of them in a way that is appropriate,” Focht said.
Tagged
food
sanitation
new york city
parks
pizza
Giulia Heyward
Giulia Heyward is a breaking news reporter on the Day-Of desk. She previously worked at NPR, as a breaking news reporter, and the New York Times, as a reporting fellow on the national desk. Her work has also appeared in CNN, The Atlantic and Politico. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or more securely on signal at 917-715-1458.
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