It Started in the Backyard
CITIBIN started in 2012 as an experiment in Liz Picarazzi’s Brooklyn backyard. As the owner of a home services company, she spent her days inside some of the most carefully maintained homes in the city and kept running into the same contradiction out front – dingy trash cans and dilapidated enclosures. She wanted to build something more beautiful, more durable, and rat resistant, and she did, starting with a single client who agreed to let her prototype the first one at cost. What began as a neighborhood solution for brownstone Brooklyn homeowners grew organically, one installation at a time, into a product residential customers across the country wanted. CITIBIN was bootstrapped from the start, 100% woman-owned with no outside investment, built entirely on the back of a real problem that nobody had solved well yet.
Then the Mayor Showed Up
For ten years, CITIBIN was a residential product. Then in February 2020, Liz read a New York Times article about New York City’s plans to containerize trash, and she saw an opportunity to version CITIBIN enclosures for public spaces. CITIBIN already had a strong brand in New York City, and was uniquely positioned to provide containerization for the Department of Sanitation's Clean Curbs program. The Times Square Alliance was among the first Business Improvement Districts to move forward with containerization and chose CITIBIN as the vendor.
Then came what was likely the biggest springboard for the business: Mayor Eric Adams held a press conference in Times Square, gesturing to a CITIBIN as the city’s answer to trash and rat problems. 220,000 visitors pass through Times Square every day, and it is one of the most punishing environments a product can live in. The residential design had to evolve fast, and the people who shaped that evolution were the sanitation crews working the block. Liz spent time with them, watching them work, asking questions, and taking notes, and their feedback became the most valuable product brief CITIBIN had ever received.
“We went into Times Square with a residential product. And quickly learned that it needed to be redesigned for public use, for different users, with different needs than the residential user. Now we have the municipal line for cities, parks, and colleges."
— Liz Picarazzi, Founder & CEO, CITIBIN
A Citywide Movement, Set in Motion
New York City’s containerization mandate steadily expanded from Business Improvement Districts to restaurants, commercial properties, and residential buildings, and CITIBIN was already there with a product tested and refined in one of the world’s most demanding environments. Today CITIBIN is in over 50 of New York’s 78 Business Improvement Districts and counting. From Times Square to Central Park, Harvard Yard to EPCOT, the same product that started in a Brooklyn backyard became infrastructure for cities, campuses, and parks across the country. In 2024, Liz was named to Inc. Magazine’s Female Founders list, a recognition that reflects not just the company’s growth but the category she built from scratch.
Trash Enclosures Were A Neglected Product Category
Trash enclosures existed before CITIBIN. What didn’t exist was a trash enclosure designed to be the most beautiful, durable, and high functioning in the world. CITIBIN created a new category in a product space that had been almost entirely overlooked when it came to design, materials, and user experience. The porters, property managers, sanitation workers, and homeowners who interact with CITIBIN every day have shaped every iteration of the product from the very beginning.
One of the proudest moments in the company's history happened in 2026 when CITIBIN began containerizing Central Park’s trash. Liz had been eyeing it for years, and manifested getting their business years before they sought out a containerization solution. Today the trash that used to be corralled into open piles is neatly stored and separated into bins for trash, recycling, and cardboard. Central Park is the springboard for CITIBIN’s parks work as Times Square was for its municipal work. And it all started in a Brooklyn backyard.
