NYC’s new anti-rat pizza box trash cans passed over by locals
B-rat summer’s not over yet.
New Yorkers aren’t convinced the city’s new pizza box trash bins will keep away ‘za-loving rodents.
City parks department officials unveiled new anti-rat trash bins designed to fit square pizza boxes in a handful of Big Apple parks on Friday — but the new receptacles went largely unnoticed by parkgoers over the holiday weekend.
“I think it’s more gestural than anything,” Chris, a 24-year-old from Queens, said inside lower Manhattan’s Father Demo Square — one of the five parks included in the trash bin pilot.
NYC Parks Commissioner Sue Donoghue announced the initiative as part of Mayor Eric Adam’s “trash revolution” and said its goal is to push rats away from popular eating spots while keeping the streets a little cleaner.
The tan pizza trash cans aren’t particularly flashy and rely on small signage that reads “empty pizza boxes only.”
“It’s good to have — I don’t know if the people [know it’s here],” Luis, 46, said. “I don’t know if there is enough information around here, for example, that there is a special location to drop the pizza. I didn’t even see it.”
So far, only six have been rolled out in different parks across the city. Each is placed next to or near traditional trash and recycling bins.
The one in Father Demo Square in Greenwich Village has largely been overlooked by pizza-loving locals, with few even realizing that it was a trash can on Sunday.
“That’s an Eric Adams initiative. Are you serious?” Esther, a 23-year-old Brooklyn resident, asked incredulously.
With regular trash cans still nearby, patrons of the famous Joe’s Pizza hardly noticed the new pizza-friendly alternative.
Three different pizza-eaters threw out Joe’s boxes in the normal bins in just a 10-minute period, a Post reporter observed.
“And look, there’s like [graffiti] already, I feel like this is, like, so emblematic,” Esther told The Post. “That’s wonderful.”
The awkwardly-shaped opening cuts down the front of the can, so low to the ground that she noted it would likely still be very easy for rats to get inside.
Each bin cost approximately $950, Gothamist reported.
The initiative falls in line with Adams’ ardent hatred for the rodents — a signature of his mayorship. He previously hired a “rat czar,” who earns as much as $180,000 for her help tapering the rodent infestation in NYC.
Next up for Adams in his continued battle against the city’s rats is his inaugural National Urban Rat Summit this September where rat experts will begin to “advance the science of urban rat management.”
