New York City is known for many things–the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum–it might be easier to name things that it is not known for.
If you are looking for a city with some of the best culinary scenes, it’s New York or nowhere. You just can’t beat the hot dogs, bagels, and of course—the pizza.
With pizza, however, there comes a bigger problem: what should we do with the pizza boxes?
It’s widely known that pizza boxes cannot be recycled due to having been contaminated with oil or grease, which can bind the cardboard fibers and make it difficult for cardboard manufacturers to recycle the boxes. However, contrary to popular belief, you can actually recycle pizza boxes. According to the NYC Sanitation Department, as long the box is “lightly soiled”—meaning no more than a few spots of grease, it is perfectly fine to recycle it. However, if the box is caked in grease, cheese, sauce, and other gunk, you should throw it away.
However, for those who enjoy pizzas in public spaces, it is often difficult to find a proper place of disposal. Most of New York City public trash cans have openings that are too narrow for pizza boxes to fit in easily, which causes blockages. Not only does this lead to an issue of trash overflow, but it also has a tendency to attract animals such as rats and racoons who overrun New York City parks.
To solve this issue, the Central Park Conservancy introduced a new type of trash can earlier this year, specifically designed for the disposal of pizza boxes. The trash can features a wide opening gap on one side that even the largest pizza boxes fit perfectly into with an opening cut down its middle in the shape of an inverted triangle. On the back, there is a sign that says clearly, “EMPTY PIZZA BOXES ONLY.” The trash bins take large design inspiration from the red-and-white checkered pattern that are famously associated with New York City pizzeria. These boxes are reportedly a part of Mayor Eric Adam’s notaries “anti-rat” initiative– having even hosted the Inaugural National Urban Rat Summit earlier this Fall.
These new pizza boxes were first tested in a pilot program that seemed to be successful: reports of the pilot program stated that they found “fewer clogged trash bins and an increase in recycled cardboard.”
The wider scale implementation of the pizza box trash cans, however, have not gone quite as smoothly. As a result of their ambiguous shape and the lack of public awareness and education, many New York City residents are unaware of the pizza box trash cans and their purpose. In fact, even when placed near normal trash cans, many residents choose to throw away their boxes into the normal bins, oblivious to the pizza box trash cans that had been created for that very purpose.
Residents who knew about the initiative also expressed their doubt about the ability of the trash cans to solve the problem, taking note of how the opening down the middle still reached low enough that rats could easily enter the trash cans.
Months after their implementation, how much these trash cans have helped to cut down on the trash overflow and rodent problem has yet to be determined. Nonetheless, it shows a promising step in the right direction for addressing waste management and issues in New York City. Better yet, the next time you enjoy a box of New York pizza, no more awkward guesswork trying to fit your pizza box through the small opening of a trash can; you can simply slide your box through the top of one of the special pizza trash bins.