City-assigned trash haulers are now picking up refuse from businesses in Central Queens, a milestone in New York’s yearslong quest to tame its chaotic and unsafe private waste industry.
As of Thursday, the city’s first commercial waste zone has been fully implemented in Queens Central — a zone that includes Jackson Heights, Corona, Elmhurst and parts of Forest Hills and Ridgewood. A 2019 reform law divided the city into 20 zones and assigned a few carters to serve each one, but this is the first to take effect.
A majority of the businesses have signed contracts with the zone’s three assigned haulers — Bronx-based Waste Connections of New York and Queens-based Basin Haulage and Boro-Wide, the Sanitation Department said. The remaining businesses were assigned a carter but can still renegotiate prices and service levels or sign with a different carter.
The Sanitation Department has not announced a timeline for rolling out the remaining 19 zones across the city, but spokesman Vincent Gragnani said the agency will “move appropriately and aggressively based on what we learn from the implementation of this initial zone.” The department has said it chose Queens Central as a pilot for its diversity of businesses.
Since September, the department had been pushing Central Queens business owners to sign contracts with their newly assigned carters. The city has already issued about 150 violation notices to waste haulers there, according to DSNY.
Intended to take effect in 2021, the program was pushed back by the pandemic and delayed further under Mayor Eric Adams, as his administration tried to avoid a scenario where businesses would face major price increases for their trash pickups.
There have been some hiccups since the city announced its chosen carters had some hiccups. Crain’s reported last February that Cogent Waste Solutions, one of the 18 companies awarded a sought-after contract under the new program, had been accused of overcharging scores of customers and was facing some $48 million in fines. The department responded by placing Cogent under the watch of an independent monitor.
Implementing commercial waste zones was among the biggest tasks faced by Jessica Tisch, who served nearly three years as Adams’ Sanitation commissioner before being appointed police commissioner in November. Adams has not yet named a new person to lead DSNY, but plans to appoint current Buildings Commissioner Jimmy Oddo, the news site The City reported last month.
The 2019 law was meant to reform an unruly private-waste system in which dozens of companies sped around the city in a race to serve 100,000 businesses — resulting in unsafe driving, rampant crashes and excessive carbon emissions. Under the zoned system, just 18 carters will be allowed to serve the city’s businesses.
In another Adams administration reform, all of the city’s businesses have been required since March to store their trash in containers rather than in trash bags. Similar rules for small residential buildings took effect in November.
