Futuristic Trash Cans to Fight Litter And Rats In Harlem

HARLEM, NY — Elected officials and community leaders held a rally in Harlem Tuesday morning to call for greater sanitation resources in the neighborhood and unveil new trash receptacles on the busy corner of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue.

Harlem's new receptacles — known officially as "Big Belly Solar Panel Trash Compactors" — will help keep neighborhood streets clean by preventing trash overflow and cutting off food sources for area rat colonies, officials said Tuesday.

The four new cans installed at each corner of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue cost $32,000 and will be good for five years, officials said. Most of the funding for the cans was allocated by former City Councilwoman, and now State Assemblywoman, Inez Dickens, officials said.

The "Big Belly" cans are outfitted with solar panels and feature designs from local Harlem artists, Barbara Askins, president and CEO of the 125th Street Business Improvement District, said Tuesday. The cans are a result of the BID and Community Board 10's “Harlem Just Dunk It” campaign which promotes cleanliness in the neighborhood.

Because the new trash cans are expensive, and the neighborhood wants to acquire more, the community must respect the receptacles, Askins said.

"I want the community to help us," Askins said. "Don't beat them up, we don't want to replace [the cans] we want to get more."

But new trash cans can't fix Harlem's litter problems alone, State Senator Brian Benjamin said Tuesday. With a development boom happening in Harlem, especially on 125th Street, the city will have to allocate more sanitation resources to the neighborhood, Benjamin said.

"One of the things we know is that 125h Street has had a lot more activity over the last couple of years and the sanitation needs to keep pace with that," Benjamin said Tuesday. "And the same garbage cans and the same recourses that we have over in Times Square, we need up here."

Benjamin pledged that he and Harlem's other elected officials would fight to secure the same recourses and respect that downtown neighborhoods get.

City Councilman Bill Perkins was also present to unveil the new trash cans Tuesday, saying they will help fight rat colonies in Harlem. Perkins — who claimed earning the nickname "The Rat Man" was one of his proudest achievements — said that even as Harlem is evolving there are two many rats in the neighborhood spreading diseases.

"Lets starve a rat today," Perkins said. "And how are we going to do that? The Big Belly, we got to make sure [garbage] goes in the Big Belly."

Photos by Patch