2024 In Review: New York's Strongest Continue to Get Stuff Clean

December 20, 2024

After decades of slow progress — at a time when cities around the world were innovating — 2024 saw major achievements in cleanliness, sustainability, quality of life and efficiency at the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY), making unprecedented progress in a long-overdue transformation of New York City streets. For generations, New Yorkers put up with massive mountains of trash bags on their streets, with municipal leaders insisting that it had to be this way. Under the leadership of the Adams administration, the Department of Sanitation has resoundingly said "NO!" to the status quo and is delivering New Yorkers the clean streets and sidewalks they expect and deserve.

"From day one, our administration has focused on creating a safer, more affordable New York City. In 2024, we continued to deliver on that vision and 'Get Stuff Done' for working-class New Yorkers," said New York City Mayor Eric Adams. "Thanks to our extraordinary public servants, America's safest big city got even safer this year, with overall crime down and thousands of illegal guns, mopeds, and ghost cars taken off city streets. We passed historic legislation to turn New York into a 'City of Yes,' shattered affordable housing records once again, and put billions of dollars back into New Yorkers' pockets. We broke records for the most jobs and small businesses in city history and moved millions of trash bags off our sidewalks and into containers. But we know that there is even more we can do to continue to uplift working-class families. As we look to the future, our administration remains committed to keeping New Yorkers safe and making our city more affordable for the millions of New Yorkers who call our city home."

"In more than 25 years at this department, our mission has never wavered — to care for this City's neighborhoods and the people who live in them. Too often, though, the status quo has gotten in the way of the kind of innovation the greatest city on earth requires," said Javier Lojan, Acting Commissioner of the New York City Department of Sanitation. "This year, with Mayor Adams in our corner, we were able to do what we've always wanted — to clean more areas, to get the trash off the streets, and to take the fight to the rats. And the work is just beginning."

Highlights from this year of the Trash Revolution

Most of the City's Trash is Finally Out of Bags and Into Containers

Following the 2023 rules requiring chain businesses and food-based businesses to place their bins in containers, the Department of Sanitation started the new year requiring all New York City businesses — of every type — to place their trash in bins. And, in November, the department implemented the first trash bin requirement for residential waste since the early 1970s, requiring all properties with 1-9 residential units to place their trash a bin with a secure lid. This means that 70 percent of New York City trash is out of bags and into containers. These measures are working: After containerization rules went into effect in April 2023, the city saw the largest year-over-year reduction in rat sighting Service Requests since 2010.

Curbside Composting Service Reaches Every NYC Resident

While Curbside Composting programs have existed in New York City for the last decade, none have ever served more than 40 percent of the city. That changed the week of Oct. 6, when every New York City resident began receiving this service on their recycling day. This model is easy — every New Yorker can now simply take anything from their kitchen or their garden and set it out for collection in a bin — and it is delivering results: in the month of October alone, New Yorkers diverted 15 million pounds of compostable material, up 65 percent over the same period last year. Material collected through these programs is turned into either renewable energy to heat homes or into compost sold to landscapers and given away free to New Yorkers for use in their yards and gardens. Without these programs, this compostable material would go into a landfill, becoming nothing but harmful greenhouse gasses.

Curbside service is only one part of the wraparound suite of composting services offered by DSNY. New York City is now home to approximately 400 Smart Composting Bins — 24-hour drop-off sites where New Yorkers can bring anything from their kitchen and anything from their garden to be put to beneficial reuse. New Yorkers opened Smart Composting Bins over 1 million times this past fiscal year — a 300 percent increase from the previous year. Earlier this year, Mayor Adams fulfilled a campaign promise by bringing DSNY collection of compostable material to every single New York City public school, helping to train the next generation of composters.

Enforcement has Boosted Safety and Quality of Life

New York City property owners are our partners in keeping the city clean, with responsibility to keep their sidewalks free of litter, as well as 18 inches into the roadway. To ensure that property owners meet that responsibility, the Department of Sanitation issued roughly 1 million cleanliness summonses in 2024, up more than 5 percent over last year.

Managing the city's graffiti removal program, the Department of Sanitation has closed more than 19,000 graffiti service requests, a 117 percent increase over last year.

Those who treat our neighborhoods as their dumping grounds should know that we have significantly stepped up illegal dumping surveillance citywide. The department's successful camera enforcement against this scourge continues, with 287 cameras deployed across the city. Summonses and impounds are up this year, putting crooks on notice: If you dump on our neighborhoods, we will catch you, we will impound your vehicle, and you will pay.

In our enforcement of street vending rules, we have performed nearly 10,000 inspections and issued more than 3,700 summonses, helping to ensure clean, safe, passable sidewalks.

The department also engaged in a new, multi-pronged strategy to get abandoned and derelict cars off the streets of the city. A new Abandoned Vehicle Removal Taskforce in partnership with NYPD removed 8,840 derelict vehicles from city streets, an 82 percent increase over last year. Building off this model, DSNY and NYPD also removed more than 7,500 ghost cars and 27,000 illegal motorized vehicles from New York City streets this year alone. These vehicles pose significant public safety risks and are increasingly being used in violent crimes, and also deprive law-abiding taxpayers of millions of dollars in unpaid tolls and fees that could otherwise be invested in critical government services.

Key Efficiency Metrics are Saving Taxpayer Money

The proportion of refuse collections missed by the Department of Sanitation continued to fall this year, reflecting a goal of never leaving refuse on the curb. Service requests for missed collection are below a tenth of a percent, essentially zero.

For many years, DSNY has sought to improve the proportion of trucks dumped on shift, a key efficiency metric showing what percentage of trucks loaded with waste are taken to a transfer station on a single shift, thereby reducing the need for staff overtime. Over the last year, the department made several creative changes around transfer routing, bringing dump on shift performance to a near record 60 percent.

Looking Ahead

The department looks forward to 2025, when it plans to roll out the first district with 100 percent containerized trash. Starting in June 2025, stationary on-street containers known as Empire Bins will be placed in Manhattan Community Board 9 for use by larger buildings. The department will also implement the first phase of commercial waste zone reform, eliminating a massive amount of truck miles from our streets while prioritizing safety and incentivizing recycling and composting. And as always, the department remains ready for whatever winter weather comes our way in first months of the new year.

About the New York City Department of Sanitation

The Department of Sanitation (DSNY) keeps New York City clean, safe, and healthy by collecting, recycling, and disposing of waste, cleaning streets, attacking the scourge of illegal dumping, and clearing snow and ice. The department operates 59 district garages and manages a fleet of more than 2,000 rear-loading collection trucks, 450 mechanical brooms, 705 salt spreaders, and several dozen bike lane operations machines. Under the Adams administration, the department is aggressively cleaning more parts of the city than ever before, including over 1,000 long-ignored areas spread across every neighborhood. With the highest wintertime uniformed headcount in 20 years, DSNY is more equipped than ever to remove snow and ice from the approximately 19,000 lane-miles of City streets.