This June, the streetscape along Broadway's cross streets in SoHo changed. New CITIBIN enclosures went in as part of New York City's effort to containerize trash, including the public litter that the SoHo Broadway Initiative and other business improvement districts collect every day. In SoHo, the enclosures arrived with something extra on top, a planter.
SoHo Broadway is the first BID to add CITIBIN's built-in planters to our large-size trash enclosures. Each one is topped with a living roof of sedum and allium, adding green infrastructure directly to a container built for trash collection. Larger standalone planters filled with ornamental shrubs and summer annuals sit alongside the trash enclosures and in the curb extensions, adding another layer of green and a buffer that helps shield both pedestrians and the containers from passing traffic.
Every bit of that greenery is planted and cared for by The Horticultural Society of New York, which maintains the district's plantings under contract with the Initiative. The first month made the case. By the Initiative's count, the new enclosures held more than 3,500 trash bags that would otherwise have ended up on SoHo's street corners. Those bags used to mean odors, obstacles, and an easy meal for rats. No more overflowing corner litter baskets - now those bags are transported to the CITIBIN enclosures as consolidation points before NYC Sanitation services them.
That's what containerized waste looks like when a district invests in beautification. Especially with plants adorning an unlikely place - a trash bin!
Read the SoHo Broadway Initiative's own recap of the first month here.
Photography by Mara Zalite.
