New York’s War on Rats has a new secret weapon: the big gray bin

In late June, I was standing at an intersection in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem, at 5 a.m., surveying a row of hulking gray bins that lined the curb. Next to me, Joshua Goodman, the deputy commissioner for Public Affairs & Customer Experience at DSNY, admired his team’s handiwork. 

“We want it to be iconic, but we also kind of want it to blend in and disappear,” Goodman said of the bin. “Eventually we want you to walk down the street and not notice that it’s here.”

As the sun rose...