Mayor Adams got much of NYC's trash into bins. It's up to Mamdani to finish the job.

Mayor Eric Adams is set to leave behind a cleaner city than the one he inherited.

Over the last four years, he oversaw a slate of reforms he dubbed the “trash revolution,” which centers around getting piles of trash bags off New York City’s sidewalks and into bins. But with Adams leaving office at the end of the month, it'll be up to incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani to fully realize that vision. The task that will require a fundamental reshaping of the city’s streets and the loss of tens of thousands of parking spaces.

The city sanitation department under Adams has mandated all businesses and residential buildings with fewer than 10 units put out their garbage in secured, wheeled containers. The new rules were followed by a drop in reported rat sightings and a reduction in the city's notorious trash mountains.

But nearly all the city’s larger residential buildings will still pile their trash on the curb until the department installs secured bins on streets across the five boroughs.

Under the current plan, which Mamdani has said he supports, buildings with more than 30 units will get a designated “Empire Bin” installed on the street for their trash. Owners of buildings with 11 to 30 units will be able to either request one of those streetside bins or opt to roll out wheeled trash bins to the curb for collection. The sanitation department has given itself until 2032 to finish the job.

The rollout sets the stage for a fight that’s vexed New York City mayors for generations: whether to prioritize street space for free parking or other public needs.

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio scaled back aspects of his signature Vision Zero program, which aimed to reduce traffic deaths, after community groups protested the loss of parking. And ex-Mayor Michael Bloomberg famously faced pushback over the installation of new bike lanes on Prospect Park West, which sparked protests from groups of Park Slope residents, including former city Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall, who’s married to U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer.

But the plan to install trash bins on streets requires a far more ambitious re-imagining of the city’s streets. A sanitation department report estimates the bins would replace upwards of 100,000 parking spaces across the five boroughs.

“Parking is a valuable resource in our city,” City Councilmember David Carr of Manhattan said. “I think removing more parking from the city is a huge mistake, and I would fight it even if it doesn't necessarily impact parking availability in the areas I represent.”

Sanitation department spokesperson Joshua Goodman said it’s time for New Yorkers to stop treating free curbside parking as an inalienable right.

“There is nothing in the Bible that says street space is for parking,” Goodman said. “It is a public space that has been designated in some cases for parking.”

Adams’ push to replace parking with bins was one of his few policies that ran afoul of car owners. He came under fire from street safety and transit advocates for kowtowing to motorists as his administration scaled back and delayed several bus lane projects. A redesign of Greenpoint’s McGuiness Boulevard was watered down after Adams’ former top adviser Ingrid-Lewis Martin allegedly pocketed bribes from local business owners who opposed the changes initially planned for the street.

But the outgoing mayor’s sanitation policies have still won him praise from some of his opponents, including Councilmember Sandy Nurse of Brooklyn, who formerly chaired the sanitation committee and has publicly criticized many of Adams’ policies.

“I’d give him a C-minus as mayor and a B-minus on trash,” said Nurse. “We did get universal composting and we are moving toward containerization, and that’s good.”

“If we want be able to consume and generate trash at the levels that we are generating, there are going to be trade-offs,” she added, referring to the incoming fight over parking spaces.

Transportation analyst Sam Schwartz, a former city traffic commissioner, said he first saw a similar on-street system for garbage bins in Barcelona a decade ago. He argued Mamdani should push forward with trash containerization even faster than the sanitation department’s current plan.

“ We are a city that is overrun by rats. The rats have figured out how to get into the plastic bags, and this is a good solution to it,” Schwartz said. “ He [Mamdani] should do this early in his administration when he still has the honeymoon period.”