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NYC's reforms to private trash pickup delayed until end of 2027
By
Ramsey Khalifeh
Published Apr 23, 2025
Modified Apr 23, 2025
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Liam Quigley
By
Ramsey Khalifeh
Published Apr 23, 2025
Modified Apr 23, 2025
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Long-stalled safety reforms to New York City’s notorious private trash hauling industry will take nearly four more years to implement, sanitation department officials said Wednesday.
The changes — required by City Council legislation passed back in 2019 — establish 20 “commercial waste zones” across the five boroughs, allowing no more than three private waste collection companies to operate in each. So far, only one of the zones has launched as a pilot, and acting Sanitation Commissioner Javier Lojan said during a Council hearing it would take until the end of 2027 before all 20 are up and running — more than eight years after they were first mandated.
“I must emphasize that if this implementation had been rushed, if we had been spread thinner, if the carters had not been given the time to do this right, it absolutely would have failed and the entire program might have fallen apart,” Lojan said.
The City Council passed the law establishing the zones after private garbage trucks were tied to a string of deadly crashes. For decades, private carters deployed trucks on lengthy routes across several boroughs, which lawmakers said led to driver fatigue and encouraged recklessness behind the wheel.
Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, who spearheaded the legislation when he was chair of the Council's Sanitation Committee, was quick to criticize the new timeline.
“The reforms we passed in 2019 are mandates, not recommendations,” Reynoso said in a statement. “From the beginning, the commercial waste zone rollout was supposed to be citywide, not the piecemeal approach this administration has chosen. While we’re glad to finally have any timeline from DSNY, their proposal for nearly three more years to get to citywide implementation is unacceptable.”
Lojan said the sanitation department will establish two more commercial waste zones in the Bronx by November of this year and will progressively roll out the initiative in the rest of the city. Sanitation officials did not provide a specific timeline for the launch of the other 17 zones.
“Every borough is unique, and I think once we get the Bronx under our belt, we will be able to have a tighter timeline,” Lojan said at the sanitation committee hearing. “Before we roll out any of the zones, we will give the carters ample time.”
While the city picks up trash from residential buildings free of charge, businesses are required to hire private trash companies to collect their waste.
Lojan said the sanitation department has received no complaints from businesses in the city’s first commercial waste zone, which launched in central Queens in January, about switching their trash collection to one of the private carters approved by the city.
The delays to the rollout come as private trash companies continue to cause an outsized number of dangerous traffic crashes, according to a report published last fall by the advocacy group Transform Don’t Trash NYC.
Lojan said the sanitation department issued 197 violations to private carters in the Central Queens zone during its first three months. Almost half of the violations were for waste haulers spilling trash onto sidewalks during pickups, while another 13% of the violations were for trucks running through red lights or traffic signals.
Tagged
new york city
Politics
sanitation
Ramsey Khalifeh
Ramsey Khalifeh is a transportation reporter on the NYC Accountability desk covering the largest transit system in the country. He was previously a general assignment reporter at Gothamist and worked on the Boston Globe's metro and copy desk. Got a tip? Email [email protected]
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