By Caitlin Hayes, Cornell Chronicle
It’s a common sight (and smell) on New York City streets: piles of torn or leaking black trash bags, which need to be pitched by hand into trucks and draw out the city’s most unwelcome tenants: rats.
In 2025, the city piloted “Empire Bins” for schools and apartment buildings in West Harlem – 800-gallon, covered bins on the street that can be lifted by truck. The pilot worked: Rat complaints went down, the streets were cleaner, and sanitation workers’ jobs became less physically taxing. But siting bins for the pilot was labor intensive, requiring crews from the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) to manually survey most streets, often measuring distances with a stick roller. To scale the program to the remaining 58 districts, the agency needed a more efficient approach.
“There are a million things to consider on a New York City street,” said Stephen Albonesi ‘11, a Cornell Tech fellow who is now tackling the challenge with DSNY. He’s part of the Urban Innovation Fellows Initiative, a new, first-of-its-kind Cornell Tech program that embeds mid-career urban planners, data scientists, designers and entrepreneurs in New York City government agencies to accelerate critical projects.
